Production resumes at Fife Ethylene Plant

ExxonMobil says production has resumed at Mossmorran's Fife Ethylene Plant.

It comes six months after the plant temporarily shut down last August following two of the three boilers there breaking down.

It was initially hoped the plant would re-start before the start of the New Year, but the firm reviewed its schedule in December.

ExxonMobil says the re-start was safely carried out and despite wanting production to have resumed more quickly, it vowed never to compromise the safety of its staff and the public.

Last week, the company apologised to local communities for any concern caused after elevated flaring happened on Thursday night (13 February), which was seen across Fife and in other places like Edinburgh.

Plant Manager Jacob McAlister said: "We also took a series of actions to significantly reduce the rate of the required elevated flaring, consistent with our commitment to the needs of local communities.

"We will implement any learnings from every part of the re-start process so that we continually improve, and further reduce elevated flaring in the future."

Image from Walter Baxter released under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic