The Pace Steam Cracker Database is a client/server application that reports on current and historical data about U.S. steam crackers operation. It provides a factual, detailed basis for the U.S. market-level planning needs of gas liquids sellers, olefins producers, and olefins buyers. The database contains actual data on operations, downtimes, and feedstocks by month since January 1988. It provides state-of-the-art tools to generate updated standard or custom reports and interface with other languages or applications. The user has complete control on selecting the unit groupings, market locations, reporting period, frequency, feed capabilities, etc. for reliable and flexible analysis.

Monthly operating data are generated through Pace's monthly surveys of each company by unit, in continuance of the Hodson Report, but with increased cross-checking steps.

Historical data by month are based on source survey records from which text and tables of the Hodson Report were compiled. This source information has been tested and corrected through a painstaking validation process. At this time, quality standards for inclusion in the database are met for data back through January 1988.

Within the data validation process, corrections have been made to accommodate inconsistencies and events between the time each survey was taken and the end of each month. The result is a uniquely clean, complete, and consistent set of operating information that is of superior quality to any data previously or currently available.

Every unit outage has been logged, tested against operating data for each month, and classified by category and type. Categories include:

• elective downtimes/reductions
• planned turnarounds
• mechanical outages
• weather-related outages.

A record is maintained for each outage for each month, with days down and percent offline for each unit.

Each facility is detailed with capacity each month, current furnace technology (survey-confirmed), unit identification, location, and feedstock capabilities. Each is assigned to a practical, physical market:

• Gulf Coast Texas System (Corpus Christi to Lake Charles, Louisiana)
• Gulf Coast East of Lake Charles (the Mississippi River Market)
• Gulf Coast Inland
• East Coast/Midwest.

Fundamental supply/demand balances for U.S. olefins are reconciled to government-reported trade and NPRA-surveyed total production and stocks, from which apparent

consumption is calculated. Monthly production from sources other than steam crackers and monthly inventory changes are interpolated from NPRA quarterly surveys to estimate monthly supply/demand data consistent with monthly operating data.

Monthly records from Pace's Petrochemical Service are included for gas liquids and heavy feedstocks prices, ethylene costs of production, and olefins prices.

The Power of Analysis . . .

Quick, reliable analyses can be a simple matter of generating standard or custom reports. Users can select periods, frequency, feed capabilities (inclusive), tables or graphs. Comparing results for units, companies, locations, and markets enables questions like the following to be answered:

• Has feed consumption and feedslate percentage changed over time?
• What are the differences among physical markets? Locations? Types of crackers?
• What have been the practical minimums/maximums for one month, quarter, or year?
• How have low or high inventories of various olefins affected olefin prices? Cracking costs? Feedstock prices? Actual changes in operations?
• What are the timing delays and duration of reactions? Do markets/types/companies respond differently?
• What has been the norm and the range of offline time? By type of downtime?
• How do periods of high or low effective operating rates affect operations?
• What are the trigger points in operating rates for steam crackers that lead to high or low profits? Have these trigger points changed over time? Are they different for different markets? When are effective operating rates (percent of capability, not capacity) more important?
• Which operations have been more stable and which more volatile?
• How are operations affected by events such as strong prices, hurricane threats, floods, freezes, or varying prices for feedstocks?