The Cracked Gas Went Backwards
The Chemical Safety Board closed its Shell Polymers Monaca file on Wednesday: two motor-operated valves opened at once, cracked gas ran the wrong way into a lit firebox, and Furnace Five was out for seven months on $95 million of damage. Also on the file: six solar determinations Commerce finished without a single comment, EPA repealing most of the 2024 power rule, and an 8-K feed that produced nothing at all.
A process control engineer opened two motor-operated valves at the same time. About six minutes later, Furnace Five at Shell Polymers Monaca exploded.
That finding went on the public record Wednesday, and it is the only thing that happened inside an American chemical plant last week that anybody filed a document about.
The rest of the week came out of Washington: six trade determinations, one power rule, one merger gate, and a filings feed that gave us nothing.
"What do you do with a week where the producers file nothing and the government files everything?"
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