HOUSTON, June 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Equistar Chemicals, LP today announced that it will extend the current outage at its olefins plant at Lake Charles, La. until market conditions improve and Equistar requires the additional production. The 850 million pounds per year ethylene unit was taken out of service on Feb. 17, 2001 as a result of reduced demand for petrochemical derivatives and escalating oil, natural gas and utility prices.
Processing units at the plant will be maintained by a core team of employees to provide for future start up when market conditions recover. Equistar plans to re-deploy the remaining employees at Lake Charles to open positions at other company locations. Equistar has about 100 employees at this plant. All contract support associated with the operation of the plant will be ceased.
"We are changing the state of readiness for resuming operations of the Lake Charles plant from several weeks to several months," said Eugene R. Allspach, president and chief operating officer of Equistar Chemicals. "Long-term, we believe that this asset has value to Equistar. But in today's environment, we can supply our customer's needs from our newer, worldscale ethylene units that can operate more efficiently than our Lake Charles plant. Taking this action today enables us to most effectively utilize our people and physical assets while retaining flexibility for the future upturn in this business."
Equistar is one of the largest ethylene producers in North America with eight ethylene cracking units and a rated annual capacity of 11.6 billion pounds. The company has worldscale ethylene crackers on the U.S. Gulf Coast at Channelview, La Porte, Chocolate Bayou and Corpus Christi, Texas, and in the Midwest at Clinton, Iowa and Morris, Illinois.
Equistar Chemicals, LP is a joint venture among Lyondell Chemical Company (NYSE: LYO), Millennium Chemicals Inc. (NYSE: MCH) and Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE: OXY) and combines their olefins, polymers and oxygenated chemicals businesses. Equistar is one of the world's largest producers of ethylene, propylene and polyethylene and a leading producer of ethylene oxide, ethylene glycol, polypropylene, specialty polymers, wire and cable resins, and polyolefin powders. Equistar has 15 manufacturing sites located primarily along the U.S. Gulf Coast and in the Midwest. Company headquarters is in Houston, Texas.
The statements in this release relating to matters that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially, based on factors including, but not limited to, future global economic conditions, industry production capacity and operating rates, the supply/demand balance for the products produced by the Company, further increases in raw material and/or energy costs, changes in governmental regulations and other risk factors. For more detailed information about the factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially, please refer to Equistar Chemicals' Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2000, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in March 2001 and Equistar Chemicals' quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2001, filed in May 2001.
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SOURCE Equistar Chemicals, LP
Web site: http: //www.lyondell.com
CONTACT: media, David Harpole, 713-652-4125, or investors, Pat Quarles, 713-309-7141, both of Equistar Chemicals, LP
