PetroRabigh's PE, PP plants still only partially running: sources

Saudi PetroRabigh's polyethylene and polypropylene plants are still only partially running even though they were started up last month following maintenance work, sources close to operations said.

The plants were closed so that necessary maintenance could be carried out following an unplanned shutdown on December 29 caused by a power outage, the company said in a filing to the Saudi Arabian stock exchange Tadawul. On January 1 it said the plants would be shut for 20 days.

On January 10, a company official said the plants had begun the process of restarting, saying he expected full capacity to be reached by January 18.

The sources didn't say why full capacity hadn't yet been reached. The Rabigh complex houses a 300,000 mt/year high density PE plant, a 600,000 mt/year linear low density PE plant and a 600,000 mt/year PP plant.

PetroRabigh is held by state-owned Saudi Aramco (37.5%), Japan's Sumitomo (37.5%) and retail investors (25%).