Market Segment
US Steel to Take Down 3 Blast Furnaces
Written by Sandy Williams
January 29, 2015
On Wednesday, US Steel CEO Mario Longhi announced that a number of equipment outages would occur at various U.S. Steel mills due to maintenance or a lack of orders in the energy segment of their business.
US Steel will begin replacing a caster at Granite City with one acquired from the former Sparrows Point facility. Demolition and installation is expected to take several months and will limit operations to only one of the two blast furnaces at Granite City. The project began is expected to be completed in late June. The blast furnace affected is rated at 3600 tons of pig iron per day.
In February, US Steel has scheduled a maintenance outage for the #6 blast furnace at Gary Works. The work will be completed in approximately 30 days but restart of the furnace will depend on steel making needs at that time. The #6 furnace is rated at 3800 tons of pig iron production per day according to the AIST.
US Steel Fairfield blast furnace will be idled until order rates recover in the flat rolled and tubular markets. Sufficient slab and rounds have been stockpiled to meet the needs of flat rolled and tubular customers. The Fairfield furnace is rated at 6000 tons of pig iron production per day.
The tin line at the East Chicago facility will be idled and orders will be filled from the five other tin lines at Gary Works and the Midwest facility. The operating levels of the finishing operations at Fairfield will be adjusted consistent with the Fairfield blast furnace outage.
Due to reduced demand for OCTG products from declining rig counts US Steel will curtail tubular operations. The seamless pipe mill at Lorain Works will be idled and seamless pipe production will be consolidated to the Fairfield Tubular operations. Seamless pipe operations at Fairfield and welded pipe operations at Lone star will be adjusted in accordance to customer need.
Sandy Williams
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