OREANDA-NEWS. Williams Partners L.P. (NYSE: WPZ) announced its expanded Geismar plant is in the final stages of commissioning and now expects ethylene production for sale to begin in December.

"Some of these commissioning activities have taken longer than originally planned, but as we have stated throughout this process, safety is our number one priority," said John Dearborn, senior vice president of NGL & Petchem Services. "And I want to thank our Geismar team for its focus on safety throughout this complex expansion and rebuild effort."

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 (NYSE: WMB) 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.