Evonik Force Majeure to Have Limited Impact on MTBE Supply

German petrochemical company Evonik's recent force-majeure as a result of a fire at the Antwerp, Belgium complex was expected to have little impact on spot methyl tertiary butyl ether markets in the near term, sources said.

The group's Antwerp unit has been completely down while the Marl, Germany, unit is running at reduced rates, a company source said.

"We are not buying in the spot market and we are not offering anything either," the source said, adding: "We have not been involved in the spot market for some time, so our FM won't have any big effect as a result".

During most of the year, Evonik has been focused on reverse engineering MTBE into more lucrative high purity isobutylene.

However, the force majeure does not help improve the already short MTBE landscape with key producer Lyondell's ongoing maintenance work. Lyondell was expected back mid-June.

"Evonik has has been a very good supplier but the FM should logically mean its contractual customers will need to look elsewhere for product if production is not restarted soon", a market source said. "For now, I do not think I have seen [extra demand] specifically."

The spot MTBE price has been coming off for the past three trading sessions on the back of gasoline moves, to drop a total of $16.50/mt to $680/mt FOB ARA Thursday.