Steel Mills

SMU Updates BF Status Chart to Reflect Mon Valley Outage

Written by Michael Cowden

May 1, 2021

U.S. Steel has commenced a 25-day maintenance outage at the No. 1 blast furnace at its Mon Valley Works in western Pennsylvania.

Steel Market Update has updated its blast furnace status chart to reflect the development.

furnace1The Pittsburgh-based steelmaker said on its first quarter earnings call on Friday, April 30, that it had begun the previously announced outage.

“We just started a blast furnace outage there today for 25 days to make some investments,” Kevin Lewis, vice president of investor relations, said on the call.

“We remain committed to that facility going forward. We’ll continue to allocate capital toward it. And we continue to believe it will generate strong earnings and strong cash flow for the business,” Lewis said.

Mon Valley Works has two blast furnaces: No. 1 and No. 3. The No. 1 furnace has daily iron-making capacity of 3,450 tons. The No. 3 furnace, which remains operational, has daily capacity of 3,100 tons.

That information comes from SMU’s blast furnace status chart, which can be found by clicking here.

The status of other U.S. Steel blast furnaces remains unchanged. The A furnace at U.S. Steel’s Granite City Works in southern Illinois remains idled, as it has been since April 2020.

“There are currently no plans to turn on blast furnace A,” U.S. Steel President and CEO David Burritt said.

The energy sector, the primary market that Granite City serves, hasn’t bounced back to pre-pandemic demand levels.

“While the market is starting to improve, it’s still at pretty low levels. And the tubular market in general continues to be impacted by high levels of imports. So … no changes to the (blast furnace) footprint at this time,” Lewis added.

Granite City has two blast furnaces: A and B. Both have daily iron-making capacity of 3,600 tons. The B furnace continues to operate.

And the three blast furnaces at U.S. Steel’s Great Lakes Works in Ecorse, Mich., also remain idled.

The furnaces have not been decommissioned. But there are no plans to restart them unless market conditions were to “change dramatically,” Burritt said.

“We believe it will be down indefinitely. … We don’t expect to turn on the blast furnaces anytime soon,” he said.

Great Lakes Works has three furnaces: A-1, B-2 and D-4. They have combined daily iron-making capacity of 11,800 tons.

U.S. Steel last year idled the hot end of Great Lakes Works.

The mill’s finishing operations continue thanks in large part to strong demand for advanced high-strength steel, Burritt noted.

By Michael Cowden, Michael@SteelMarketUpdate.com

Michael Cowden

Michael Cowden is managing editor for Steel Market Update. Cowden has covered the steel industry since 2007. He has since 2014 specialized in flat-rolled steel but has previously reported on steel long products, steel pipe and tube as well as aluminum. Before joining SMU, Cowden held reporting jobs at Fastmarkets AMM in Chicago - where he was involved in launching AMM's daily hot-rolled coil index, the Associated Press in Pittsburgh, and the Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. He has also worked as a copy editor and in marketing at the University of Chicago Press. Cowden has a BA in English from the University of Chicago and an MSJ journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Contact him at michael@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7872.

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