U.S. Steel to buy National Steel

Detroit Free Press ^ | 1/9/03 | ASSOCIATED PRESS

[Hermann the Cherusker]

PITTSBURGH -- U.S. Steel Corp., the nation's largest steel maker, said Thursday it will purchase bankrupt National Steel Corp. for about $750 million.

Under the deal, U.S. Steel would also assume about $200 million of its smaller rival's debt.

U.S. Steel could increase production capacity by as much as 40 percent and expects a combined annual cost savings of about $170 million within two years of purchase, company officials said. Savings will come from a reduction in redundant overhead, transportation costs and an improved labor contract, company officials said.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

So what do you suppose is going to replace all that steel we use? Pixie dust???

[E Rocc]

The company I once worked for inherited a dock and grounds across from LTV on the Cuyahoga. With the gentrification of Flats area of the River, the home office wondered why we couldn't have a sail boat marina up river on this property.
I think the property might have been the site of one of North America's first oil refineries...it had more or less continuous seepage.

That's very possible since John D. Rockefeller was from here and started out here. But it may have also been an old industrial site. Used oil dumping used to be a commonplace thing.

The area around LTV is quite a bit upriver from the entertainment district part of the Flats. Between the noise and smells and the need to contend with barges coming upriver (Cuyahoga means "crooked" in the Algonquin Indian language), I doubt it would have been all that successful.

-Eric

[section9]

Speaking of which, how are our friends at Nucor doing these days?

I assume that they were helped somewhat by the tariffs?

Nice to see some necessary consolidation going on. Hopefully, USS will winnow out some of the fat in National.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Obviously, the upriver location and smoky steel mill neighborhood were disincentives to parking a sailboat nearby. The site may well have been John D's first refinery--it was a subject we talked about regularly. The previous owners had stored N6 fuel oil for the ore boats coming up the river but the development of the Lorain pellet terminal killed off that business.