Who Has Butadiene Left for October?

If you buy butadiene on a US contract, the plant that makes about a third of it spent Monday afternoon routed to its flare.

At 2:50 PM on September 14, TPC Group's Houston plant lost power. The operator notified Texas at 4:10 PM through STEERS and wrote the cause down in four sentences that are worth reading exactly as filed:

"The petrochemical plant lost power. Reason is not yet known. The fail-safe mode is to route vents to the flare. The flare began smoking at approximately 14:50 and is still currently smoking."

The fail-safe worked. That is what the black smoke over east Houston was.

What the report says the flare took is 10 pounds of 1,3-butadiene and 100 pounds of VOCs, out of emission point EP-5, over 1 hour and 5 minutes.

Six days later that incident is still marked OPEN, and the only report on file is the initial one.

"What does a power loss at this plant actually cost, and who covers it in a quarter that is already short?"

The Ten Pounds Is a Placeholder

TPC said so itself, in the same filing, under the heading for how the quantities were derived: "Quantities at time of this report are estimates only. Final quantities will be based on flare online analyzer data and/or best engineering calculations."

The actions field is equally plain. The plant was "working to start up operations of its boilers to assist with steam quench to the flare to minimize smoking," and the facility would be "restarted as quickly as practicable while maintaining a safe start up."

Publicly, the company said less. Its statement to Houston stations that afternoon put the outage "at approximately 3 p.m.," said it "impacted our boilers, resulting in flaring with visible smoke," and added that it did "not expect any impact to our employees, industrial or community neighbors."

TPC's own news page carries nothing about September 14 at all. The most recent items there are the ENEOS acquisition, the March debottlenecking release and the December 2024 capital program.

One thing the file does not tell you, and this matters for anyone sizing a supply gap: the duration field is the reported emissions event, the window the flare was smoking. It is not the time the units were down, and a full electrical trip takes a C4 train longer to come back than it takes a flare to stop smoking.