STYRENE MONOMER

Styrene Monomer prices rose past US$1350/MT in Asia in the week of February 11, 2008 on the back of rising feedstock benzene prices in Asia that have witnessed a sharp rise in demand from USA and Europe. These regions are currently short supplied because of an unplanned outage of Valero's 210,000 bpd refinery in Delaware City, USA, caused by a power loss. A sudden outage at Singapore Ellba's 550,000 tpa SM plant due mechanical trouble has also caused concerns about SM supplies in Asia for the next seven days till the repair work is completed.