Skyrockets in Flight, Methanol Delight—US Production Is Lifting Off
There’s good reason to be bullish about a skyrocketing trajectory for US methanol production. Natural gas prices are relatively low and likely to stay so; domestic demand for methanol continues to increase; and overseas demand—especially in China—is rising even faster. More than a dozen methanol mega-projects are in various stages of planning, design and construction, most of them along the Gulf Coast. If they were all built (they probably won’t be), US methanol production capacity would increase more than 10-fold to nearly 30 million metric tons per year, and turn the US from a methanol importer to an exporter within two or three years. Today, we look into why methanol demand is rising, what new capacity is under development in the US, and what it all means for natural gas producers.
