Singapore (Platts)--15Nov2010/139 am EST/639 GMT
Iran's Pars Petrochemical Company, is expected to ship between 15,000-17,000 mt of styrene monomer to China by the end of the week, a company source said Monday. Pars, which restarted its 600,000 mt/year SM plant at Assaluyeh October 30 after shutting on August 22 due to a shortage of main feedstock benzene, is maintaining run rates at 70% of capacity. Although Pars will be able to produce a further 17,000 mt of SM by the end of November based on existing run rates, the company had yet to decide if this will be shipped only to China, or if a partial volume will be shipped to India. Previously on November 1, Pars had indicated to Platts that it was looking at shipping up to 30,000 mt and 6,000 mt of SM to China and India, respectively, by the end of November for December arrival. Pars shut its SM plant August 22, after Borzouyeh Petrochemical Company -- its main feedstock supplier -- diverted benzene supplies from its 430,000 mt/year plant for gasoline production. Iran's privately owned Pana News reported late August that Borzouyeh had converted the reformate unit to produce 6.6-8 million liters/day of gasoline. Borzouyeh, along with five other petrochemical plants within Iran, had switched to producing gasoline, as US sanctions have discouraged companies and countries from supplying gasoline to the import-dependent country. (See<PCA088>) --Philip Koh, philip_koh@platts.com Similar stories appear in Platts Asian Petrochemical Scan. See more information at http://www.platts.com/Products.aspx?xmlFile=asianpetrochemicalscan.xml