World War II bomb stops production in Czechia

Orlen, Czechia’s largest petrochemical company, halted production at its refining and chemical complex in Záluží, Czechia, on Aug. 24 after discovering a World War II bomb at the site.

The complex is located near the town of Litvínov, about 60 km north of Prague. Orlen evacuated staff from the refinery and ethylene cracker the day after the discovery. The company closed the complex 3 days later. Czechia authorities were not due to make the bomb safe until at least Aug. 30.

“As a consequence of this extraordinary situation, crude oil processing in our Litvínov refinery plant as well as production at the steam cracker unit and the polymerization units are severely impacted,” the company says in a press release. Orlen says the incident is a force majeure event that it could not have foreseen and that, as a consequence, it is not obligated to fulfill contracts to supply certain products.

Záluží is home to Orlen’s only ethylene cracker. The plant has the capacity to produce 544,000 metric tons per year of the olefin, much of which is used on-site to make polymers. Orlen also makes ammonia and aromatic compounds there.

Workers discovered the bomb during excavation work ahead of building a water electrolysis plant to make green hydrogen.

An Orlen predecessor company began construction of a coal-to-synthetic oil plant at the site in 1939—the same year German troops occupied Czechia. It became one of a series of refineries built or taken over by the Nazis. The bomb that Orlen found likely was dropped in 1944 or 1945 by British planes targeting the refinery.

A number of bombs have been found at European chemical complexes in recent years. In 2015, BASF discovered an unexploded bomb at its site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The 500 kg weapon was one of more than 40,000 dropped by US bombers during WWII. The firm found another bomb there in 2009.