Lake Charles chem plants remain down amid Louisiana power outages

HOUSTON (ICIS)–Chemical plants and refineries in and around Lake Charles, Louisiana, remain down on Tuesday as the state still has several thousands of power outages caused by Hurricane Laura.

The storm made landfall in the early hours of 27 August as a category 4 hurricane in Louisiana near the border with Texas, with maximum sustained wind speeds of 150 miles/hour (241 km/hour).

Many companies have shut down units at their complexes in and around Lake Charles, which is about 50 miles away from where Laura made landfall. Restarts will depend in part on the resumption of power.

The following shows the number of power outages reported in Louisiana and other states.

Louisiana	260,770
Texas	39,008
Arkansas	3,495
Mississippi	481

Source: PowerOutage.US

On Monday morning, Louisiana reported more than 300,000 outages, and Texas nearly 60,000, according to PowerOutage.US.

PLANT UPDATES
Westlake Chemical said late on Thursday that its facilities at Lake Charles have incurred limited physical damage from Hurricane Laura based on initial assessment.

The restart timing “will primarily depend upon the availability of electricity, industrial gases and other feedstocks”, the company said in a statement. Westlake did not single out or highlight any damage to transmission lines.

Westlake’s plants in Lake Charles include a joint venture ethane cracker, several units that produce low-density polyethylene (LDPE), linear low density PE (LLDPE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), chlor-alkalis (chlorine and caustic soda), ethylene dichloride (EDC) and vinyl chloride monomer (VCM).

Westlake declared force majeure on PVC and VCM following the storm, market sources said.

The LACC cracker in Lake Charles remains down, market sources said. LACC is a joint venture made up of Westlake and Lotte Chemical.

Sasol said that its complex in Lake Charles remains down, as high-voltage transmission line corridors going into the city suffered damage.

“Start-up of the plants will depend on the availability of electricity, industrial gases, other feedstocks and the restoration process,” Sasol said in a statement.

Early assessments of the plant have found no damage to process equipment and no damage caused by the storm surge, Sasol said. Cooling towers suffered damage from strong winds.

Sasol produces ethylene, propylene, ethylene oxide (EO), ethylene glycol (EG), phenol, LLDPE, surfactants and other chemicals at the Lake Charles complex.

The company has declared force majeure on EG after the hurricane, according to market sources.

It also declared force majeure on LLDPE and high density PE (HDPE), according to a customer letter.

Sasol produces HDPE under a joint venture with INEOS in La Porte, Texas.

Lotte declared force majeure on EG, according to market sources.

CITGO said its refinery in Lake Charles received damage from high winds as a result of Laura. It does not expect to immediately restart the refinery, and it will not have a restart date until it fully assesses the storm damage.

Firestone Polymers’ US styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) plant remains shut down, it said. It suffered wind damage.

Louisiana Pigment said, “due to the extensive damage to the infrastructure supporting our area, it will be much longer than originally expected to restore services”.

It does not know when employees could return to work.

The plant is near Lake Charles and it makes titanium dioxide (TiO2).

Louisiana Pigment is a 50/50 joint venture between US-based Kronos Worldwide and UK-based Venator Materials.

Plants farther away from the landfall site suffered little damage and are resuming operations. They shut down operations as a precaution prior to the storm.

Additional reporting by Bill Bowen, Tom Brown, Amanda Hay, Michael Sims, Antoinette Smith and Nurluqman Suratman

Thumbnail image shows storm damage. Photo by Gerald Herbert/AP/Shutterstock

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