Total restarts two more lines at polystyrene facility at Carville, Louisiana

12-Aug-16

Over the past few days, Total Petrochemicals and Refining restarted two more lines at its polystyrene facility at Carville, Louisiana. One facility was restarted over the weekend and the second one early this week after a shutdown in June, as per sources in Platts. First two lines at the site were restarted in late July and early August.
Total declared a force majeure in late June on general purpose polystyrene, high impact polystyrene and high heat crystal out of Carville, according to a letter sent to customers and obtained by S&P Global Platts at that time.
"This action becomes necessary due to the local electricity provider transformer failure and subsequent unplanned shutdown of our reactors located at TPRI's Carville, LA polystyrene plant," the company said in the force majeure letter. Total did not immediately reply to a message Wednesday seeking comment on the operational status of the facility and the force majeure. Total's polystyrene facility has capacity of 1.45 bln lbs/year (660,000 mt/year).