Texas Gulf Coast Petrochemical Plants Begin Restarting After Beryl — OPIS

Petrochemical manufacturers on Tuesday were assessing the storm damage and, in some cases, restarting idled facilities after Hurricane Beryl swept through the state on Monday.

Dow Chemical kept most Texas assets running throughout the storm, including at sites in Deer Park, Sabine, Texas City and Beaumont, it said in an afternoon statement.

Dow's massive Freeport petrochemical complex, which sits on the coast about 45 miles northeast of where Beryl made landfall, maintained operations at its major assets.

"High sustained winds damaged local electrical infrastructure which is impacting some assets at our site in Freeport," the company said. "Major assets remain operational while our teams are safely working to quickly restore power across the site."

The Freeport site includes three crackers with a total ethylene capacity of around 7.2 billion lb/year (3.3 million metric tons) and numerous downstream polyethylene units and other derivatives units.

Dow said it has begun the restart processes at its Seadrift, Texas, PE site, which was shut prior to Beryl's arrival.

Braskem idled its Oyster Creek, Texas, polypropylene plant before the storm and was in the process of restarting Tuesday afternoon, a market source said.

ExxonMobil notified customers that all its PP lines in Texas and Louisiana remained in operation on Tuesday. The company operates several PP lines in Baytown, Texas.

Ineos shut PP units at its Chocolate Bayou site near Alvin, Texas, as a precaution, according to market participants. The company late Monday told customers operational assessments were underway at its Texas high density polyethylene and PP manufacturing sites, which include Chocolate Bayou and La Porte.

Railroads also reported progress on storm recovery efforts Tuesday afternoon.

All of Union Pacific's affected track segments, with the exception of the Galveston area, have been returned to service, the railroad said on its website.

BNSF on Tuesday said operations have resumed in the areas of its network affected by Hurricane Beryl, and it was working to clear the backlog caused by the storm.

Both railroads cautioned that customers should expect lingering delays for shipments through the area.

This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

--Reporting by David Barry, dbarry@opisnet.com; Editing by Adam Burkin, aburkin@opisnet.com and Jeff Barber, jbarber@opisnet.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 09, 2024 17:46 ET (21:46 GMT)

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