Steel Mills
U.S. Steel Slates Additional Blast Furnace Outages
Written by Michael Cowden
August 18, 2021
U.S. Steel plans to take additional outages at its blast furnaces in the Midwest, the company confirmed.
The Pittsburgh-based steelmaker will take an approximately seven-day outage on the B furnace at its Granite City Works outside of St. Louis beginning on Oct. 1, a company spokeswoman said.
And U.S. Steel will also take a roughly 10-day outage on the No. 14 blast furnace at its Gary Works outside of Chicago starting on Nov. 30, she said.
“The following are planned maintenance outages to ensure the reliability and integrity of our assets,” the spokeswoman said in an email to SMU.
The outage on No. 14 is for furnace stack cooling member replacement, she said.
The latest outages come after U.S. Steel confirmed last week that it would be taking a 38-day outage at the No. 6 furnace at its Gary Works starting on Sept. 30.
The outage on No. 14 is notable because it is the largest furnace of the four operating blast furnaces at Gary Works.
Granite City has two blast furnaces, A and B. The A furnace has been indefinitely idled since April 2020.
Steelmakers in practice build inventory ahead of planned outages to make sure customers shipments aren’t impacted. But the total volume of hot metal in theory out of the market is substantial.
The No. 6 furnace has daily capacity of 3,450 tons, meaning a 38-day outage there theoretically takes 131,100 tons ouf of the market. The No. 14 furnace has daily capacity of 7,450 tons, and so the outage there theoretically takes 74,500 tons out of the market. And the B furnace has daily capacity of 3,600 tons, which menas a seven-day outage there theoretically takes 25,200 tons out of the market. The total: 230,800 tons, according to figures compiled using SMU’s blast furnace status table.
And the outages at U.S. Steel occur against the backdrop of Cleveland-Cliffs – the largest flat-rolled steelmaker in the United States – taking a 45-60 day outage at the No. 7 furnace at its Indiana Harbor steel works, also outside of Chicago. That furnace – the largest in North America – has daily capacity of 11,500, which means a 45-60 day outage theoretically takes 517,500-690,000 tons out of the market.
Also, it’s not just integrated mills that are taking outages. So, too, are electric arc furnace (EAF) producers.
Case in point: U.S. Steel’s Big River Steel subsidiary is taking an approximately two-week outage at its mill in Osceola, Ark., from October 10-23, the spokeswoman said. That’s longer than the one-week outage SMU reported last month for the Arkansas mill.
By Michael Cowden, Michael@SteelMarketUpdate.com
Michael Cowden
Read more from Michael CowdenLatest in Steel Mills
Domestic mill shipments slip in July: AISI
US steel shipments decreased month over month in July, but were up from last year, according to the latest figures from the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI).
Nippon and USS drop litigation vs. USW and Cliffs
Another chapter of the Great U.S. Steel Buyout of the 2020s melodrama has closed, with all involved parties terminating the litigation disputes between them.
Steel Summit: Analysts say demand likely to struggle until 2027
Steel industry analysts at this year's SMU Steel Summit said they see lackluster demand through this year and next.
USS Clairton begins full production of batteries 19 and 20, 13 and 14 hot idled
U.S. Steel has activated batteries 19 and 20 at its Clairton Coke Works facility after pausing each “out of an abundance precaution” following an explosion at the site on Aug. 11.
Steel Summit: Schneider sees SDI ‘on the edge of a very good run’
Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI) President and Chief Operating Officer, Barry Schneider, remains bullish about the Fort Wayne, Ind.-based steelmaker’s position in the current market.