US Steel stops Mon Valley blast furnace

Integrated steelmaker US Steel is indefinitely shutting down a blast furnace at its Mon Valley Works plant in Pennsylvania.

The company is not shutting down its 1.4mtpa Blast Furnace No. 3 after it completed scheduled maintenance to help "balance our production against our order book," a company spokesperson said.

This is the company's second downtime in less than a month. On Sept. 7, US Steel shut down its 1.5 Mtpa Blast Furnace No. 8 at the Gary Works plant in Indiana.

Combined, the two idle furnaces have an estimated crude steel production capacity of 7,945 sti/d. Had they remained low throughout the fourth quarter, 731,000 tons of steel produced would have been taken off the market.

Many market participants say that the US steel industry is currently experiencing an oversupply. While US Steel is the only steelmaker to announce production cuts, steelmaker Nucor expects its third-quarter earnings to fall along with steel plate and heavy plate volumes.