Media: PrefChem hopes to restart troubled plant by year-end

In a side interview at the APPEC 2021 conference, Petronas' executive vice president and CEO of downstream - Arif Mahmood said that the company hopes to restart the Pengerang Refining and Petrochemical Complex (PRefChem) by the end of the year after the initial plan to bring the plant online in August 2021 fell through.

PrefChem was taken offline on 16 March 2020 after an explosion hit the complex, causing severe damages. The company has been announcing several restart schedules since then, however, none has been materialized.

"When it comes to refining, petroleum products, we remain cautious. There's an oversupply of refining capacity and we'll see recovery hopefully towards the end of this year, early next year,” Arif Mahmood added.

Market sources remain cautious about the restart schedule claiming that it might take the complex of such scale up to the second quarter of 2022 to produce stable outputs.   

Overview:

PrefChem is a 50%-50% joint venture between Petronas and Saudi Aramco. The complex houses a naphtha cracker that produces 1.2 million tons/year of ethylene and 600,000 tons/year of propylene. 

Downstream units include a 450,000 ton/year homo-PP line, a 450,000 tons/year PP copolymer, and a 400,000 tons/year HDPE unit. The company also owns a C6-based metallocene PE plant with a capacity of 350,000 tons/year.