Petrochem complexes on Mississippi River plagued with problems

Louisiana is among the top three chemical-producing states in USA. Petrochemical companies employ 10,600 workers in the Baton Rouge; 5,000 in New Orleans. Petrochemical jobs are among the highest in manufacturing: US$1,416 per week in the Baton Rouge; US$1,491 in New Orleans. Refineries and petrochemical plants along the Mississippi River face hurdles for smooth operations, as they continue to be plagued with difficulties in procuring raw materials, scarcity of gasoline as well as gathering dispersed employees. However, they seem to be limping back to operations and are slowly resuming operations after Hurricane Katrina struck south Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina broke the regular supply chains - it has damaged or flooded rail lines and interstate highways, choked the mouth of the Mississippi River with debris and distorted shipping lanes on the lower Mississippi that had to be re-identified by the U.S. Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers. Outages at ethylene, propylene, benzene and phenol units have been reported. Several chlor-akalai units have restarted or were in the process of restarting, while all vinyl facilities on the Gulf coast had restarted. Though the plants have been restarted, the biggest issues have been ensuring raw material supply and the ability to ship products to consumers. The river has been reopened to barge traffic and more recently to ships with a draft of 35 feet -- one direction at a time during daylight hours. For Formosa Plastics in Baton Rouge, New Orleans is typically the rail hub. Formosa's daily production of PVC is 1,350 tons, enough to transport in 13 or 14 rail cars. Plagued by Katrina's aftermath, in order to transport goods, Formosa has had to use alternate rail routes and depend on trucks. Now it takes about 2-3 18-wheelers to haul as much as a rail car to transport the same amount of PVC. Another problem which Formosa faces is transport for its 300 employees to get to work. The Pioneer chlorine plant in St. Gabriel, also plagued with the same issue, is also looking at carpools and flexible schedules, in order to encourage gasoline conservation. Several of the paper mills and plastics factories that use the chlorine produced at the plant have yet to fully resume operations. Hence Pioneer seems to be plagued with storage problems too. The losses and additional expenses being incurred by chemical plants are still being calculated. Plants can lose up to millions of dollars a day for each shutdown. Refineries and chemical plants use large volumes of oil and natural gas as fuel or electricity and for raw materials. As a result of its industrial base, Louisiana ranks 8th in the country in total energy consumption and 5th in petroleum consumption. That's why it's critical to re-establish oil imports aboard tanker ships, keep supply lines such as rail, roads and pipelines operational and regain full production from Gulf of Mexico platforms and pipelines damaged by Katrina.