Nippon Oil Corp. , Japan's largest refiner, said on Monday it is boosting output of propylene to meet growing demand for the basic building block for the chemical sector. Its wholly owned chemicals subsidiary, Nippon Petrochemicals Co. Ltd., began production on Sept.1. The new unit, which uses olefin-conversion technology (OCT), has an output capacity of 140,000 tonnes per year of propylene, the company said in a statement.
　　 Propylene is a major commodity in the chemicals industry and is used in the production of polypropylene and plastics. Demand for propylene is rising especially in China, and northeast Asia propylene prices are hovering strongly around $1,300 per tonne. The unit's feedstock is 40,000-50,000 tonnes of ethylene and about 80,000-100,000 tonnes of normal butene a year, a spokesman said. Normal butene is derived from converting 200,000 tonnes of butene produced at the parent Nippon Oil's fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) units, he added. 　　
　　　 The chemicals unit also started up an iso-octane producing unit with output capacity of 40,000 tonnes per year. The unit uses isobutene produced from the OCT unit. Iso-octane is used to produce high-octane gasoline.The latest move raised Nippon Oil group's propylene output capacity to 670,000 tonnes per year. Nippon Oil said it plans to raise output of propylene further to 800,000 tonnes per year by the end of March 2008.