Westlake postpones Louisiana cracker turnaround

01 May 2008 21:28  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--Westlake will take its Lake Charles 1 cracker in Louisiana down for maintenance in 2009, and not in October 2008 as originally planned, a company official said on Thursday.

The 544,000 tonne/year unit will be offline for 30 days in the first half of 2009, said Westlake chief executive Albert Chao during a conference call with investors.

Chao told investors the 45,000-tonne outage was not expected to have a material impact on capital expenditure.

The turnaround does not involve a sizeable chunk of capital, he said.

Westlake also owns another 544,000 tonne/year cracker in Lake Charles, and a third unit in Calvert City, Kentucky, with 195,000 tonnes/year of capacity.

Calvert City is due for a 20-day turnaround in 2011, while Lake Charles 2 is scheduled for 30 days of maintenance in 2012, according to an industry source.

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Additional reporting by David Barry

By: William Lemos
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