Shell to End Phenol Force Majeure.

Shell Chemical says it will lift force majeure on phenol and acetone by the end of the week. Shell declared force majeure earlier this month as severe storms downed a plant that supplied steam to its phenol-acetone plant at Deer Park, TX, forcing the phenol units offline briefly. The company says it put phenol customers on 90% allocation, and limited acetone volumes to 100% of contracted volumes. The plant has two trains with capacity totaling 600,000 m.t./year of phenol, and 366,000 m.t./year of acetone. Market sources say the outages have not been a major problem because the phenol …