Explosion at LyondellBasell's Wesseling site

24-Jan-12

LyondellBasell's Wesseling site Germany has been hit by an explosion over the weekend, as per Platts. The blast occurred on Saturday morning at the polyethylene plants. The cause of the blast is now the subject of an investigation by the company and local authorities. No fire occurred after the explosion. The scale of the damage and the target restart of the plants remained uncertain. Seven workers were injured by the incident and were taken to the hospital, and were released on the same day. Industry sources reported that the blast was at the low density polyethylene plant. LyondellBasell operates four PE plants in Wesseling comprising 3 high density and 1 low density PE units. "The impact on LDPE markets for January will be minimal as the company had already called an order stop on LDPE volumes for the month from Wesseling last week," an industry source said. The site also hosts two crackers and two polypropylene plants with combined capacities of 1 mln tpa and 460,000 tpa, respectively. These are currently running normally, the spokesman said. The rest of the plants at the Wesseling site, including the crackers and polypropylene plants, are currently running normally.