Published on June 28, 2018
The commercial production has started now by OCI Natgasoline plant this week which marks the commencement of a new era in the US methanol industry. The Natgasoline’s plant has the production capacity of 1.8 m tone/year. In the past the US was depended largely on imports from tiny Trinidad and Tobago for its methanol supply, until producers began restarting mothballed plants in 2011-2012.
A few years later US methanol capacity was just short of 2.5m tonnes/year in early 2015. By the end of that year, American capacity had grown to 6m tonnes/year.
The OCI release said its new unit would be “the only new capacity expected in the Americas to come online in 2018”.
OCI’s press release issued on Monday showed how size matters in the new era.
The company called the commercial start-up of the plant in Beaumont the largest in the US, surpassing the previous largest US methanol plant, the 1.3m tonne/year Celanese-Mitsui unit in Clear Lake, Texas.
