(BUSINESS WIRE)—As reported by media outlets previously, on April 14 a mechanical fire occurred at the Atlas Energy Solutions Inc. mine in Kermit, Texas. Atlas officials said they remain grateful that all personnel at the site, including employees and contractors, are safe, that no injuries occurred, that no environmental impacts have been reported, and that there was such exceptional work by the first responders. John Turner, president, CEO, and CFO of Atlas, said: “We are very proud of the quick action from our integrated teams, both Atlas and Hi-Crush, who are working to deliver collaborative, timely, and customer-focused solutions. While we work hard to ensure events like this do not occur, we are focused on safely returning the facility to operation as soon as possible. In addition, benefitting from our differentiated scale and associated geographically distributed proppant production operations, we are continuing to support our customers’ ongoing needs.”
The company has conducted a preliminary assessment of the facility, which is ongoing, and can provide the following information.
- The fire primarily impacted the “feed system,” which transports sand from the dryers and separators to storage silos. The full “feed system” rebuild is expected to be completed by the end of the second quarter.
- The team began moving temporary loadout equipment to the Kermit facility within 48 hours of the incident. The facility remains closed and initial restart of operations is expected at the beginning of next week.
- Once the facility is restarted and the temporary loadout equipment is fully operational, we expect to fulfill all Kermit facility customer commitments with sand produced and loaded from that facility.
- We are assessing the cost to repair the feed system and reviewing the financial impact of the incident. In addition, we have filed an insurance claim and expect coverage to be available to reimburse us for the cost of the repairs.
- The temporary closing of the Kermit facility will have no impact on the timing or cost of the Dune Express construction.
Related: Sand: Delivery is Everything
