Calgary — Agrium Inc.’s Carseland, Alberta, nitrogen plant is expected to be down for six to eight weeks for repairs, according to the company. It was down earlier this year for two to three weeks. This time, the complex went down Feb. 20 due to a problem with a high pressure heat exchanger in the urea unit. While this would have taken only about three weeks to repair, Agrium is opting to move forward a planned six-week Carseland turnaround for July-August to coincide with the current outage. As a result, the facility may be down for up to eight weeks. Agrium estimates some 90,000 mt of urea and/or ESN (Smart Nitrogen, an Advanced Technology product) will be impacted. Urea capacity at the facility is 680,000 mt/y and ESN is 219,000 mt/y. Agrium expects to have adequate supplies to meet its commitments during the spring season.
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