LSB Industries Inc., Oklahoma City, Okla., announced on Dec. 15 that its chemical plant in Cherokee, Ala., was taken out of service in late November 2014 for unplanned maintenance. The outage was related to the replacement of a bearing in the facility’s ammonia plant, and a subsequent gasket leak and damage to insulation material that occurred upon start-up of the plant.
LSB anticipates that the plant will be out of production for approximately 30 days as a result of necessary repairs, returning to service by the end of the year. LSB said the downtime has and will continue to result in lost fixed cost absorption while the plant is not operating, as well as lost production, which is expected to total approximately 16,000 tons of ammonia representing saleable product of approximately 20,000 tons of UAN, 9,000 tons of AN Solution, and 1,700 tons of ammonia.
LSB said that during the downtime the Cherokee facility will be able to supply most of its customers’ demands for UAN, AN Solution, and ammonia from its inventory and, as a result, expects it will end 2014 with lower than previously anticipated inventory levels. The company plans to notify the market when the Cherokee facility is returned to service.
LSB has revised its outlook for fourth-quarter 2014 Chemical Business sales volumes as a result of the outage. On the Agriculture side, sales volumes for UAN fell from the previous outlook of 95,000-115,000 tons to 80,000-85,000 tons, while AN and anhydrous ammonia sales volumes remain at previous levels of 25,000-30,000 and 25,000-30,000 tons, respectively. In the Industrial, Mining and Other category, sales volumes remain at previous outlook levels of 145,000-150,000 tons of nitric acid, 30,000-35,000 tons of AN and AN Solution, and 6,000-8,000 tons of anhydrous ammonia.