PotashCorp extends Trinidad ammonia plant outage

15 May 2008 23:23  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--PotashCorp has decided to double the length of an outage of its 04 ammonia plant in Trinidad to undertake a wider maintenance programme beyond the original repair, the Canadian fertilizer company said on Thursday.

The 608,000 tonne/year plant was taken out of service on 2 May to replace an internal heat exchanger in the ammonia converter.

"With this work underway, management has determined that it will use this opportunity to proceed with more extensive maintenance at the 04 plant," PotashCorp spokesman Tom Pasztor said.

The plant would now be out of service for 60 days, instead of the originally scheduled 28 days. 

The longer outage would result in lost production of about 120,000 tonnes of ammonia, compared with an expected 56,000 tonnes under the earlier plan, Pasztor said.

PotashCorp would be able to meet all of its customer obligations despite the extension of the outage, Pasztor said. He could not comment on whether PotashCorp would require extra purchases of ammonia from the Black Sea or other sources of supply.

No details were available on when the wider maintenance would have otherwise been due, or how often the broader work programme needed to be carried out.

PotashCorp's associated urea operation in Trinidad would not be affected by the ammonia plant outage, Pasztor said.

The extra loss of production could pull in some of the slack that market participants have said was emerging in the US Gulf market, in part because the rain-delayed start to the ammonia application season in the US corn belt has backed up the supply chain.

Mideast sellers were also looking to send cargoes to the US Gulf, according to one major buyer.

The contract price for ammonia peaked at $635/tonne CFR (cost & freight) Tampa in March, and has since declined to $550/tonne for May.

The main participants in the contract have been expecting to see a further reduction in the contract price for June, but have not yet put forward their actual price ideas.

Other participants were speculating that the price might drop $25-30/tonne to bring it into line with Black Sea FOB (free on board) levels.

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By: Stephen Burns
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