Polimeri Europa Shuts Down Ethylene Unit at Gela Complex

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Polimeri Europa (Milan, Italy), a wholly owned subsidiary of Italian oil and gas giant ENI SpA (NYSE:E) (Rome, Italy), which owns most of the ethylene production in the country, has shut down the company's ethylene plant at the petrochemical chemical complex in Gela, Sicily.

Polimeri Europa manages the production and marketing of petrochemical products such as olefins, aromatics, styrenes, elastomers and polyethylene in 10 sites in Italy, two in Great Britain, and one each in Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal and Hungary. The company manufactures ethylene at five Italian complexes: Brindisi Petrochemical Complex (Brindisi, Puglia), which produces 904 million pounds per year of ethylene; Porto Marghera (Venice), with 1.1 billion pounds per year of ethylene production; the Priolo Gargallo plant (Priolo Gargallo, Sicily), which produces 1.64 billion pounds per year of ethylene; the Porto Torres facility (Porto Torres, Sardinia), which produces 595 million pounds per year; and Gela (Gela, Sicily), with 550 million pounds per year of ethylene production.

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

On September 14, 2009, a maintenance turnaround began at the ethylene cracker at the Brindisi petrochemical site. The unit will remain offline for about 44 days will resume operations by the end of this month. Routine maintenance and cleaning work is being performed, and some of the other units of the plant, such as the polyethylene units, have also been shut down.

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