US Williams Geismar cracker restart delayed; restart by end of June

HOUSTON (ICIS)–Williams expects to restart its cracker in Geismar, Louisiana in June, two months later than anticipated and a full year after a fatal explosion at the site, executives for the US-based energy and petrochemicals firm said on Thursday.

Williams had previously said it was working towards an April restart.

Speaking during Williams’ fourth-quarter earnings conference call, the executives said that the cracker would be restarted with an expanded capacity of 1.95bn lbs/year (885,000 tonnes/year) of ethylene. At the time of last June’s explosion, Geismar was in the middle of a project to expand capacity from 613,000 tonnes/year.

“Right now, mechanical completion is expected in the first part of May, and there’s obviously a lot of things to go right” for a successful restart, CEO Alan Armstrong said on Thursday.

“Having said that, the window [for restarting] is probably from the last week of May through the end of June,” he added.

Lost production from Geismar was a negative for Williams’ fourth-quarter and full-year results.

Additional reporting by Jeremy Pafford