Most major fertilizer plants hit by the mid-February deep freeze were believed to be in the process of coming back up this week (GM Feb. 19, p. 1).
OCI NV CEO Ahmed El-Hoshy told analysts on Feb. 25 that the recent outages may have cost the industry some 150,000 mt of urea. He said the U.S. was already behind on urea imports and had needed another 1.4 million mt by June in order to meet spring season demand. Despite the recent uptick in U.S. urea prices, he said the U.S. continues to trade at a discount compared to Arab Gulf values.
El-Hoshy said OCI plants in both Iowa and Texas had some downtime during the period. “But the impact of the stoppages has been much more than offset by pre-existing gas hedges as we went into the month of February 100 percent hedged in the U.S….,” he said.
CVR Partners also told analysts at its earnings call that the loss of production should significantly tighten nitrogen fertilizer inventories in advance of spring. CEO Mark Pytosh said it had no major disruptions at its Coffeyville, Kan., plant since it uses petroleum coke as a feedstock. However, he said CVR was “opportunistic” at the East Dubuque, Ill., nitrogen plant, saying it made more sense to take the plant down and sell pre-purchased gas.
Nutrien Ltd. said its Borger, Texas, nitrogen plant, which went down due to a loss of gas supply, was in the process of restarting. The same was true for its Fort Saskatchewan, Alta., plant, which pulled forward a turnaround in order to address the freeze issue.
Nutrien said there was no impact at Aurora, N.C., or White Springs, Fla., and minimal impact to phosphate operations. Potash mining operations were at full production.
LSB Industries said its Pryor, Okla., nitrogen plant began a phased restart on Feb. 21. The company also reported that its El Dorado, Ark., facility was ramping up to full production after its primary natural gas supplier asserted a claim of force majeure on Feb. 17 and materially restricted supply to the plant. The company said its Cherokee, Ala., plant was not materially impacted by weather and operated at targeted levels throughout February.
After indicating it had some outages in Louisiana during the cold weather, The Mosaic Co. said all of its plants were up and running.
In the meantime, two major NOLA area ammonia plants were still offline due to other reasons – Yara’s Freeport plant with mechanical issues, and Incitec Pivot Ltd.’s Waggaman, La., plant, where a major turnaround that started in January is stretching into mid-March.