US LSB Industries completes Oklahoma facility turnaround, expects uptick in UAN output

HOUSTON (ICIS)–US LSB Industries said it was able to complete a successful turnaround of their Pryor, Oklahoma, fertilizer facility.

The company said in a third quarter update that the investments at Pryor were focused not only on improving its reliability and daily ammonia production volume, but also included the debottlenecking of the facility’s urea plant.

LSB expects this effort will result in an incremental of 75,000 short tons annually of UAN output.

At the El Dorado, Arkansas, facility the producer said it completed the construction of an additional 5,000 short tons of nitric acid storage which is providing the ability to capitalize on incremental sales opportunities not previously available.

A turnaround at the Cherokee, Alabama, facility will take place this November and a turnaround at El Dorado is scheduled for the third quarter of 2025, with the primary goal being increased volumes.

LSB said it continues to make progress on its two energy transition projects and is expecting to start producing low carbon products at El Dorado beginning in 2026 pending regulatory approval.

Regarding the Houston Ship Channel project, the company said it has completed the pre-front end engineering design and is working through the results as well as engaging with potential customers and preparing to select an engineering contractor for the final study.

It expects to start that effort during the first half of 2025 with completion by mid-2026.

Looking at fertilizer market conditions the producer said the ammonia market is healthy, and pricing has been strong driven by many factors including tight US supply dynamics along with geopolitical concerns and extended turnarounds and outages reducing global inventories

LSB also cited the delayed start-up of new production capacity in the US Gulf and an export terminal in Russia

For UAN the producer said pricing remains solid due to low inventories in the distribution channel following both spring applications and summer fill program with there being historically low imports and strong exports

As it looks ahead it feels there is potential pent-up demand at the retailer and producer level which could lead to favorable order volumes and pricing in the first half of 2025.