Europe March Propylene Contract Settles up €35/mt on Month at €1,000/mt
The European propylene monthly contract price for March delivery has settled at €1,000 ($1,180)/metric ton, according to producer and consumer sources and Chemical Market Analytics (CMA) by OPIS, a Dow Jones company.
The ethylene monthly contract price for March remained unsettled by the time of publication. The February contract settled at €1,080/mt.
A rise in average upstream naphtha costs during February of around $34/mt from January has driven production costs higher, whilst several unplanned and planned production issues tightened supply, market sources said.
Propylene supply tightness was enhanced by planned and unplanned production issues in the Mediterranean, with Libya’s Ras Lanuf refinery offline since attempting to restart from last year. The Milazzo refinery in Sicily, Italy, begins three months of planned maintenance at the start of February, and
Repsol’s Tarragona plant has gone into turnaround.
Market sources said the failure to agree the ethylene settlement was down to differing views between upstream costs and market fundamentals. One polymer producer told OPIS that European ethylene consumer demand remained weak despite the rise in upstream costs.
Europe ethylene imports gain on year amid turnarounds
Around 2.5 million mt of ethylene capacity is set to undergo planned maintenance in the second quarter. In addition, some downstream and upstream ethylene units have suffered unplanned stoppages or have declared force majeure in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp Northwest European hub and Mediterranean.
Other sources have added that the ethylene supply tightness is not as pronounced as that seen in propylene, whilst the U.S.-Europe arb that opened
since the start of the year was set to replenish the lost supply arising from outages in the first and second of the year.
Around 140,000 mt of ethylene – or some 10% of the total European production set to go into planned maintenance in the second quarter – has been imported into Europe from the U.S. since since January as the arbitrage opened, according to Vortexa shipping data.
The arb opened amid U.S. oversupply, lower natural gas feedstock costs, a strengthening of the euro versus the dollar and competitive refrigerated vessel freight rates. Total exports represent a 17% increase in U.S. ethylene shipments into Europe during January to February this year compared to the same period in 2025, according to the Vortexa shipping data.
Reporting by Miguel Cambeiro, mcambeiro@opisnet.com