Chevron Phillips Chemical declared force majeure Sept. 1 on its polyethylene products after assessing the impact of Hurricane Laura to its Gulf Coast PE operations, the company said in a letter seen by S&P Global Platts.
"Unfortunately, it has become apparent that issues arising in connection with the hurricane and the associated outages have impacted our planned production and delivery of polyethylene products," CP Chem stated.
CP Chem operates a 420,000 mt/year high-density PE plant in Orange, Texas, and an 855,000 mt/year cracker in Port Arthur.
The company plans to minimize the impact of the event and return to full PE deliveries as soon as possible, the letter said.
Although there was no exact recovery timeline, the letter stated that it's working to evaluate the duration of the interruption.
The letter follows a group of force majeure declarations by other petrochemical producers this week, including Westlake Polymers, INEOS Olefins & Polymers and Sasol, which are all recovering from widespread power outages and damage from Laura, which made landfall on Aug. 27.
With the producers declaring FM on PE, there are no firm offers being made in the marketplace, making the resin extremely tight and pushing up pricing, multiple sources have said.
On Aug. 31, Platts last assessed all three of the daily US PE spot export pricing flat day on day with HDPE blowmolding pricing at $904-$926/mt (41-42 cents/lb), LDPE at $1,003-$1,025/mt (45.5-46.5 cents/lb), and LLDPE butene at $827-$849/mt (37.5-38.5 cents/lb), all FAS Houston basis.
