BATON ROUGE - Officials at the ExxonMobil Baton Rouge Chemical Plant released a statement to put the public at ease as flares will be visible lighting up the sky above the plant during maintenance work this week.

Intermittent flaring may be visible at ExxonMobil on Monday and Tuesday during the planned work.

Plant officials say flares are primarily safety control devices intended to consume excess hydrocarbons during shutdown and startup of operations.

They said they apologize in advance for any inconvenience the flaring may cause. ExxonMobil says the safety of plant workers and proper control of emissions are top priorities.