They will be doing a lot of  maintenance activity at the plant this month.  
Unfortunately, much of the key material needed to do the full turnaround 
needs several months lead time.  For example, we have already ordered the 
catalyst for the turnaround scheduled in March.  We discussed this yesterday 
with David Bush, the plant manager, and he said they would do what they could 
in December, but the critical path items would not be available until closer 
to March.  

The MTBE plant will be going down December 15th and the maintenance (spooge 
clean up) has been accelerated so we can come back up in Mid January to take 
advantage of an expected increase in MTBE margins.

As far as longer term shut down considerations go, no one seems to have a 
good grasp on what the methanol market will do.  Obviously, domestic 
production will be curtailed which should lift prices.  If prices rise and 
January gas prices fall back below $6.00, then we would probably come back up 
in January.  Regarding staffing effort, particularly in my group, the 
shutdown does not significantly impact the accountants and with a high 
vacation time and year-end coming up, their plates are pretty full.  At the 
plant, the purchasers, contract administrator and A/P folks will actually be 
busier trying to get materials  and contracts for both outages settled, 
especially with the timing change for the MTBE outage.

Let me know if you want to discuss this further.



Rod Hayslett

12/05/2000 08:35 AM
To: Kerry Roper/GPGFIN/Enron@ENRON
cc: Denis Tu/FGT/Enron@ENRON 

Subject: Re: Methanol Plant Shut Down  

Thanks.     I think we need to be looking at the "accelerating of the 
maintenance" question as well.   If there is a possibility that the economic 
world has changed and there will be a longer shut down of the facilities, 
does it make sense to do that work now?      What are the decision points 
that we need to have information on in order to make that determination?     
Should we set up a small group to come up with an answer to this 
question?      Should we also be looking at what we could do to reduce the 
staffing by reassigning some of the people to other things and minimizing the 
effort expended against Clean Fuels, particularly in your group?




Kerry Roper
12/05/2000 08:25 AM
To: Rod Hayslett/FGT/Enron@ENRON
cc:  

Subject: Methanol Plant Shut Down

FYI only - We are shutting the methanol plant down for the month and are 
selling the natural gas back for $7.73.            

Kerry