OREANDA-NEWS. Shell's Moerdijk cracker in the Netherlands is up and running and deliveries to customers are resuming.

The cracker, which was shut in October 2014, is back in operation after a "careful inspection and controlled start-up phase," a Shell spokesman said.

"Customers are now once again being supplied with ethylene, propylene, butadiene and acetylene produced by Shell Moerdijk," he said, adding it may take some time to begin producing certain cracker products that meet customers' specifications and to stabilise the overall supply chain for those products, which he did not identify.

The cracker, which has a capacity of 900,000 t/yr of ethylene and 500,000 t/yr of propylene, was shut as a result of contamination in the steam system.