Natgasoline methanol facility in Beaumont, Texas goes offline

The Natgasoline methanol production facility in Beaumont, Texas, is currently offline, several market sources said. The facility, which is a joint venture of Proman and OCI, has a total production capacity of 1.75 million mt/year.

The Beaumont facility was heard to have experienced an operational issue related to the gas feed, one of the sources said Aug. 6. Sources did not provide an estimated timeline with regards to the facility coming back online.

S&P Global Platts attempts to reach the company for confirmation were not successful.

The development comes following continued production outage at Koch’s YCI Methanol One facility in St. James, Louisiana. The 1,700,000 mt/year facility was heard to have halted production July 27.

One market source had said July 26 that the facility would likely experience a blip, as is common when new facilities come online.

Andreas Herzberger, a spokeswoman for Koch, said in a July 27 email that Koch does not comment on any plant operations.

Meanwhile, LyondellBasell’s La Porte, Texas, acetyls facility is still offline after it leaked approximately 100,000 pounds of acetic acid late July 27, plant officials said during a press briefing July 28.

The facility, which produces 544,000 mt/year of glacial acetic acid and 385,000 mt/year of vinyl acetate monomer, had been undergoing a partial shutdown for planned maintenance at the time of the release, site manager Stephen Goff said during the briefing.

Kara Slaughter, a spokeswoman for LyondellBasell, said in an Aug. 3 email that the plant would continue to keep acetic acid production offline in support of the ongoing investigation into the incident.

The outages coincide with production constraints in the European market, leading to global supply tightness.

One market source said Aug. 5 that while the US market may be seeing slow trading at the moment, there could be some pick-up in activity amid reduced production.

“European production has yet to return [it is behind schedule] so expect them to try and pull more tons from across the Atlantic as well,” the source added.

S&P Global Platts last assessed spot methanol prices at 121 cents/gal FOB USG on Aug. 5. The spot price has risen over the past two months, in line with supply constraints in Europe and the US, with an average of 106 cents/gal FOB USG for June and 114.48 cents/gal FOB USG for July.