THE Fife Ethylene Plant team is working hard to see flaring cease soon after the problem caused by the thunder storms early on Wednesday.

The plant has had to flare for around 36 hours now but manager Jacob McAlister said today that they are getting close to returning to normal production.

"We are making good progress towards safely returning to normal production, following the extreme weather early yesterday morning," said Mr McAlister.

"Our team has taken a number of actions to significantly reduce the size of the flare, and we continue to look for ways to further optimise.

"As we move through these final stages, people may see some fluctuations in flare size but, as always, we will work hard to keep this to a minimum.

"As you will appreciate, we are putting safety first, but we are committed to completing the required steps as quickly as possible. We thank you for your continued patience and apologise for any disruption to local communities".

Flooding issues caused by the intense rain of Tuesday evening and the early hours of Wednesday led to not only the fault which saw flaring from the Fife Ethylene Plant but also a clear need to use the aerial flare stack

The thunderstorm activity posed problems for the Ethylene Plant, and also the Shell NGL Plant at Mossmorran, and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency confirmed the need for the aerial flaring.

Said a SEPA spokesperson: "We have deployed staff in the area to assess community impact and monitoring of noise and air quality.

“We understand that the flaring, which began in the morning, was a result of disruption to power for both operators due to extreme weather conditions. Use of the ground flares to minimise elevated flaring was also limited due to flooding on the site.

"We continued to speak directly with both companies regarding the restoration of normal operations.

“As always we were in contact with our partners in Fife Council and NHS Fife over the course of Wednesday and this will continued until normal operations resumed.”