US steelmaker US Steel could abandon its project to upgrade its Mon Valley facilities to invest the same money, about $1.5 billion, elsewhere, CEO David Burritt said recently at the end of a conference call on the company’s third quarter results. As reported by the Pittsburg Post-Gazette, he said, "The key word in all of this is really the optionality. We can decide to put it in Mon Valley. We can decide to put it somewhere else. We have a lot of flexibility to decide where this goes."
The Mon Valley project was announced in May 2019. According to the original plans, it was supposed to begin in September of this year, with start-up scheduled in the fourth quarter of 2022. Partly due to delays due to Covid-19, the plans were postponed indefinitely earlier this year. The project involved the installation of a new casting and rolling line at the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, and the construction of a cogeneration power plant at Clairton Coke Works, both in Pennsylvania.
US Steel posted a loss of $234 million for the third quarter this year, compared to a loss of $84 million in the same quarter of 2019 and a loss of $589 million in the second quarter of 2020.