Explosion at Dow Chemicals' Bahia Blanca complex in Argentina

02-Jul-19

Dow Chemical's Bahia Blanca complex suffered an explosion in a cracker early Friday, the company said the blast occurred in the complex's cracker No. 2, as per spglobal.com. "At 0:20 a.m. at the Ethylene BB 2 plant in Dow Argentina, an incident occurred that caused an overpressure and rupture of a container without the presence of fire due to the absence of flammables," Dow Argentina said. "No injuries were reported. The plant is stopped in a safe condition." An investigation to the cause of the blast is underway, Dow said.

According to sources and S&P Global Platts data, Dow Chemical Bahia Blanca complex has two crackers - cracker 1 with installed capacity of 275,000 m tpa and cracker 2 with installed capacity of 455,000 m tpa. The complex has six productive plants: two for ethylene and four focused in polyethylene (HDPE, LDPE, LLDPE and EPE). Contacted market participants said there's no information on resumption timetable for the cracker.