Lotte Chemical Resumed Operations on the 6th
Investigation Underway Into Cause and Damage Scale
Future Discussions Planned on Compensation for Damages
The LG Chem Daesan plant in the Daesan Petrochemical Complex, Seosan, Chungnam, which had been halted due to a power outage, has fully resumed operations after 13 days.
LG Chem announced on the 10th that it sequentially resumed production starting with some downstream processes from the 27th of last month and fully restarted the plant at 100% capacity the day before.
Earlier, on the 25th of last month at around 9:30 a.m., a power outage occurred at both LG Chem and Lotte Chemical Daesan plants, but electricity supply was restored about an hour and a half later. Lotte Chemical, which uses the same power grid, restarted its plant on the 6th. HD Hyundai Oilbank and Hanwha TotalEnergies, which use different power grids, reportedly did not suffer any damage from the outage.
The naphtha cracking center (NCC) at LG Chem Daesan plant has an annual production capacity of 1.3 million tons (t) of ethylene, and Lotte Chemical has also been producing 1.1 million tons of ethylene annually.
The damage incurred by the two companies due to this plant shutdown is estimated to be in the tens of billions of won. An LG Chem official explained the situation at the time, saying, "Not only the NCC but also the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plant and the synthetic rubber plant that produces final products all stopped."
An LG Chem representative stated, "Electrical accidents involve many exemptions and are quite complex, so the exact cause can only be identified after the investigation is completed," adding, "We plan to jointly investigate with the electricity suppliers and claim compensation for damages depending on the cause."
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