Dutch company to build billion dollar manufacturing facility in Texas

Fuel Fix:

A Dutch fertilizer company said Thursday it plans to build in Beaumont what would be the largest methanol plant in the United States.

The plant would cost more than $1 billion and produce about 1.75 million tons of methanol per year, according to the company, OCI N.V. The plant will be build by OCI N.V. subsidiary Natgasoline.

“Basically, this project has one input: natural gas,” CEO Nassef Sawiris said in an interview with FuelFix. “And the final product, methanol, is currently being imported into the U.S. The U.S. has about a 5-million-ton deficit so this project will substitute imports.”

OCI N.V. owns another methanol plant in Beaumont, which has a capacity of 730,000 tons per year and alone accounts for 80 percent of the nation’s methanol production available for sale, Sawiris said. OCI N.V. purchased the previously mothballed Beaumont methanol plant two years ago and is in the process of expanding its capacity.

Methanol is made from natural gas and is used in a wide range of products, including paints and glue. But it also has the potential to be a replacement for gasoline, or to be blended into gasoline just like ethanol is, Sawiris said. Other countries allow methanol to be used in gasoline, but Congress has yet to approve legislation that would allow it, he said.

“It’s a very clean fuel and it’s made out of natural gas and is high octane,” Sawiris said. “So it makes a ton of sense to accept it as an additive and it’s not going to compete with ethanol. It’s going to be put alongside ethanol.”

Large chemical and refining companies produce methanol for their own use, but don’t sell it to third parties, Sawiris said.

Another planned methanol plant, to be constructed by Valero, would have a capacity of 1.6 million tons per year andwould cost about $700 million, according to that company.

The decision by OCI N.V. means at least four methanol plants currently are planned for the U.S. Gulf Coast. The other projects are being built by Valero, Methanex and Celanese.
...

Methanol makes more sense as an additive than ethanol because it does not effect food prices and availability.  This project also shows how manufacturing jobs are being created in this country as a result of the shale gas revolution, and the high price of alternative energy in Europe.  There is also a lack of feed stock in Europe because the carbon phobia has made drilling for shale gas almost impossible.