Chemical plant shuttered by Hurricane Ike to take time to come on stream

Shortage of raw materials and personnel, along with transportation problems could result in weeks of delay in start up of chemical plants shuttered in the wake of Hurricane Ike, as per ICIS. Dow's plants on the Texas Gulf coast suffered no significant damage but it and other chemical producers did not offer a restart schedule. Dow's plants in Freeport, Clear Lake, LaPorte, Texas City and Seadrift had no apparent significant structural damage. Dow's Plaquemine plant in Louisiana and its Union Carbide St Charles Operations in Hahnville, Louisiana, were not affected by Ike and were continuing recovery and start-up following Hurricane Gustav, which earlier struck the Louisiana coast. Though the petrochemical industry in and around the Houston-Galveston area escaped Hurricane Ike with relatively minor damage, a large portion of US Gulf coast petrochemical capacity was shut down due to the hurricane, including 51% of US ethylene capacity and 40% of US chlor-alkali capacity. Very limited structural damage to refineries was apparent in most cases. It is unclear when electricity will be fully restored, but it is expected that a sizeable portion of affected petrochemical capacity to be off-line for 1-2 weeks. Celanese's Texas facilities in Clear Lake, Pasadena and Bay City had experienced minimal to no damage. Celanese's Clear Lake plant makes 1.2 mln tpa acetic acid 360,000 tpa polyvinyl alcohol and 310,000 tpa vinyl acetate; its Pasadena plant makes 35,000 tpa acetic acid and the Bay City plant makes 300,000 tpa vinyl acetate. Shell is continuing to assess its Deer Park refinery and chemical operations in Texas. Varying levels of basic utilities [steam, air, water, electricity] are in service, but an estimation of resumption of normal operations at the refinery and plant cannot be made. The Deer Park production capacities include 1,449,000 tpa ethylene and 500,000 tpa propylene, according to ICIS plants and projects. Shell's Norco and Geismar chemical plants in Louisiana are still in start-up mode after Gustav but added that production will be constrained by availability of dependent resources that were affected by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. The Geismar plant was supplying product from existing inventory. Its production capacities include 420,000 tpa of ethylene oxide and 400,000 tpa of ethylene glycol. Bayer MaterialScience said its Baytown plant in Texas incurred no apparent structural damage but some damage was identified within the site's utilities. Employee accessibility to the site and the availability of raw materials are immediate challenges, especially since the greater Baytown area was severely impacted by the storm. Bayer's Baytown plant has a production capacity of 345,000 tpa of caustic soda and 305,000 tpa of chlorine. Bayer is inspecting its Texas sites in Channelview and Spring, which also remained closed. Rohm and Haas said its Deer Park plant in Texas maintained power. There was some minor flooding in parts of the Deer Park and Lone Star facilities. The Deer Park facility has a capacity of 660,000 tpa of sulphuric acid and 580,000 tpa of acrylic acid.The Weeks Island complex in Louisiana was evacuated on Friday and it remained shut down. Heavy local flooding has prevented site visits to assess damage; however the complex did retain electricity throughout the storm. DuPont, which has nine plants in the Texas coast area, said plant assessments were still being made and that it was "too early to speculate" about Ike's impact on the company's business.