A maintenance turnaround set to begin Tuesday at Nova Chemicals’ Corunna site in St. Clair Township will be the largest in its history, the company says.
A maintenance turnaround set to begin Tuesday at Nova Chemicals’ Corunna site in St. Clair Township will be the largest in its history, the company says.
Along with maintenance, inspections, cleaning and repairs typically part of turnarounds at the chemical plant, the work will complete tie-ins for the Corunna cracker expansion that is part of a $2.5-billion investment by Nova Chemicals that includes a new polyethylene manufacturing site nearly completed next door on Rokeby Line.
“This is the largest turnaround in our history. . . in terms of the amount of work and the complexity of the work,” said Rob Thompson, vice president of manufacturing East for Nova Chemicals.
The Corunna site makes ethylene, along with other chemicals, from natural gas liquids delivered by pipeline. When the new Rokeby site begins production later this year it will join two existing manufacturing sites Nova Chemicals has in St. Clair Township where ethylene is used to make polyethylene plastic.
Construction of the Rokeby site began in 2017 and the project included expanding production at the Corunna site.
Work at the Rokeby site is “progressing well,” Thompson said. “We’re in the homestretch in terms of construction activities.”
Work there has “moved into the finishing, electrical, instrumentation work and we’re heavily engaged in commissioning the facility,” he said.
“We’re on track to begin starting up the facility towards the end of the year,” Thompson said.
There are currently 1,500 construction workers at the Rokeby site and 1,100 to 1,500 skilled trades workers are expected to be part of the turnaround project at the Corunna site which is scheduled to be shut down until early July.
“It’s a significant amount of time required to complete the necessary activities to enable the new polyethylene facility,” Thompson said.
Nova Chemicals said turnarounds are important to ensure the reliability of operations and allow maintenance, improvements, tie-ins and capital projects that can’t be done when production units are on-line.
The company said elevated flaring and some increased noise can be expected during the first few days of the shutdown, as well as heavier traffic in the area throughout the turnaround, particularly between 6 am and 8 am, and 5 pm and 7 pm
Thompson said the company is working to “mitigate” impacts on its neighbours.
Detailed planning and engineering for the turnaround has been happening for a number of years, “pretty much from when we finished our last turnaround in 2017,” Thompson said.
Construction on the expansion and new plant began soon after that shutdown and continued through the pandemic.
“It’s a rewarding experience to see this world-scale facility be built right here in Sarnia-Lambton” and a “true testament to the workforce we have here – the skilled labour,” contractors and other partners, he said.
The company said the expansion would create 150 permanent jobs at the new site. Thompson said hiring for those jobs has been completed and “that team is on site” and involved in training and commissioning the new facility.
Nova Chemicals said updates on the turnaround will be shared with local residents through the MyCNN community information system available through the website lambtonbases.ca.