Polimeri Europa Plans Maintenance Shutdown at Gela Complex

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Polimeri Europa (Milan, Italy), the petrochemical subsidiary wholly owned by the Italian oil and gas giant Eni SpA (NYSE:E) (Rome, Italy), is planning the next major maintenance turnaround at the company's chemical processing units in the Gela petrochemical complex in Sicily. The turnaround is to take place in the third quarter of 2010. Eni owns most of the ethylene production in the country.

The Gela petrochemical complex, located next to Polimeri Europa's Gela refinery, has two operational units: a low-density polyethylene unit and a propylene unit. Both facilities will shut down for 20 days in September 2010 to undergo maintenance and cleaning work. Gela complex also had an ethylene-producing unit which was indefinitely shut down due to technical and market reasons.

Polimeri Europa manages the production and marketing of petrochemical products such as olefines, aromatics, styrenes, elastomers and polyethylene in 10 Italian sites, two in Great Britain, and one each in Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal and Hungary. The company manufactures ethylene in five local complexes: Brindisi Petrochemical Complex (Brindisi, Puglia), which produces 904 million pounds per year of ethylene; Porto Marghera (Venezia, Veneto) with 1,080 pounds per year; Priolo Gargallo (Priolo Gargallo, Sicilia) with 1,642 pounds per year; Porto Torres (Porto Torres, Sardegna), with 595 pounds per year; and Gela (Gela, Sicily), with 550 pounds per year. In the last site, Polimeri Europa has halted its ethylene cracker 2 indefinitely.

In early 2007, the company decided to temporarily stop producing ethylene at Gela petrochemical complex because the facility was old and its technology obsolete. It is a relatively small cracker, and its operation was not competitive. Employees opposed the measure, as about 250 job posts were affected; finally, the cracker never resumed operations and Polimeri Europa decided to shut it down indefinitely in 2008. Plant authorities have stated that there are no plans to restart the unit and that the remaining processing plants in the site, the propylene and low-density polyethylene unit, operate with feed brought from other sites and in coordination with Eni's Refinery, also in Gela.

On September 14, 2009, a maintenance turnaround started in the ethylene cracker at Brindisi petrochemical site (Brindisi, Puglia). The unit has remained offline for about 43 days and is to resume operations on November 1, 2009.

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