Texas City vying for $4.5 billion methanol plant for China market

Fuel Fix:

Texas City is one of two Gulf Coast locations in the running for a $4.5 billion methanol manufacturing and exporting plant, a development that would mark the first such project in the coastal industrial town since the 1940s, officials said Tuesday.

A Chinese company last week agreed to lease 900 acres of land at Shoal Point, a former dredge spoils site with prime waterfront acreage south of the Texas City Dike, while it conducts a full environmental assessment of the undeveloped land.

At full capacity, the facility under consideration would produce 7.2 million tons of methanol each year for export to China, making it one of the largest such plants in the world, according to industry consultants.

If it comes to fruition, the project would be the most significant economic development in Galveston County in recent history, said Galveston County Economic Alliance CEO C.B. “Bix” Rathburn, who spoke on behalf of the company.

The deal is far from final. The company is expected to decide by next year whether to build the plant in Texas City or in Donaldsonville, La., on the Mississippi River about 65 miles west of New Orleans, Rathburn said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.
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Made from natural gas, methanol is used in a wide range of products, including plastics, paints, solvents, refrigerants and pigments. Other countries also use methanol as a replacement or an additive to gasoline, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not approved it as a transportation fuel.
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A Dutch fertilizer company in November announced plans to build what was then touted as the nation’s largest methanol plant, a $1 billion facility in Beaumont capable of producing 1.75 million tons of methanol per year.

The proposed Texas City plant is four times as large, with an estimated production as much as 10 percent of current world demand, said Dave McCaskill, vice president of methanol and derivative services for Argus Dewitt, another unit of Argus.
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There is more.

This is another opportunity created by fracking and the shale gas boom.  It could create jobs and help restore the US trade balance with China.   Texas City is on Galveston Bay across from Galveston Island.  It is already heavily industrialized.