Fire-damaged plant in Kaohsiung to be fixed by next month

Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC, 中油), the nation's state-owned oil refiner, plans to restart a petrochemical plant by next month after repairing damages caused by a fire.

"Repairs will take two to three weeks, and then we'll wait for inspection from officials, including those from the Council of Labor Affairs," Chuang Po-hsiung (莊博雄), chief executive of the company's petrochemical division, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

"We expect to resume production within a month," he said.

The fire at the company's No. 3 naphtha cracker broke out last Friday while the company was restarting the plant after a one- month maintenance shutdown.

Petrochemical supply to customers will fall by as much as 20 percent because of the delay in resumption of output, Chuang said. The No. 3 naphtha cracker has an annual capacity of 230,000 tonnes of ethylene.

The refiner shut the plant on May 28 following weak demand for petrochemicals, he said.

CPC's two other naphtha crackers, which can produce a total of 885,000 tons of ethylene a year, are operating as usual, Liao Tsang-long (廖滄龍), a company spokesman, said in Taipei.

Naphtha, distilled from petroleum, is used to make petrochemicals including ethylene. CPC, the nation's second-biggest ethylene producer, doesn't plan to cut purchases of naphtha, Chuang said.

About 60 to 70 people gathered outside the No. 3 naphtha cracker in Kaohsiung County after the fire broke out on Friday, demanding relocation of the plant and voicing opposition to the company's plan to expand the facility, Liao said.