Williams Partners L.P. has announced commissioning efforts at Geismar plant is near completion and now expects ethylene production for sale to begin in January.

The commissioning effort has been especially challenging after the uncharacteristically hard shutdown at the time of the incident and as a result of being out of commission for more than a year, said John Dearborn, Senior Vice President of NGL & Petchem Services.

Safety is their number one priority and guides all milestones related to this project as they work to rebuild their reputation as a safe and reliable supplier of olefins.

Capacity at the Geismar plant is now 1.95 billion pounds of ethylene per year. Williams Partners' share of the total capacity of the expanded plant is approximately 1.7 billion pounds per year. Williams owns controlling interest and is the general partner of Williams Partners.

Williams Partners L.P. owns and operates both on-shore and off-shore assets of approximately 15,000 miles of natural gas gathering and transmission pipelines, 1,800 miles of NGL transportation pipelines, an additional 11,000 miles of oil and gas gathering pipelines and numerous other energy infrastructure assets.

The partnership's operated facilities have daily gas gathering capacity of approximately 11 billion cubic feet, processing capacity of approximately 7 billion cubic feet, NGL production of more than 400,000 barrels per day and domestic olefins production capacity of 1.95 billion pounds of ethylene and 114 million pounds of propylene per year.