X-Message-Number: 21910 From: "Mark Plus" <> Subject: Fertilizer plant closes, high gas prices blamed Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2003 17:33:26 -0700 http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/business/article/0,1426,MCA_440_2017989,00.html Fertilizer plant closes, high gas prices blamed By Richard Thompson June 7, 2003 PCS Nitrogen indefinitely shut down its Millington plant Wednesday, leaving its 130 workers in limbo. No one has been laid off, said John Hunt, general manager of the plant at the corner of Old Millington and Rust roads. "Everybody's still working their regular schedules," said Hunt, adding that workers are idling the plant in order to restart it again one day. Yet no one knows when that day will come. That depends on the price for natural gas, the primary raw material used at the facility, which makes ammonia and urea - a nitrogen-rich organic compound - used in fertilizers. Natural gas prices have more than doubled compared with a year ago. On Friday, the Henry Hub spot price for natural gas was $6.30 per million British thermal units - the standard measure of heat energy; but a year ago, the price was $3.18 per million BTUs. Tom Pasztor, director of corporate and government relations for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., which bought the Millington facility in 1997, said the price of natural gas is rising faster than the price at which the company can sell its product. The Henry Hub natural gas price for next-day delivery has risen 20.2 percent since the start of May. "We simply can't run the plant in Memphis if every ton we produce we lose money on," he said. When natural gas prices go down, Pasztor said, "Yes, absolutely" the plant would re-open. W.R. Grace & Co. built the fertilizer plant between 1953 and 1954, and operated it until 1989. That's when the plant was sold to Western Branch Holding Co. (Nitrex). Nitrex sold it in 1990 to Arcadian Corp., which sold it to Potash. Potash is the world's largest fertilizer company. - Richard Thompson: 529-2346 _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21910