Methanol Middle East

In the U.S., the primary methanol production location is in the Gulf Coast area. Methanol is also produced in Canada, South America, Europe, and the Middle East. Methanol production and price is not controlled by any single country or consortium of countries. Any country with remote natural gas reserves is a candidate for methanol production since production of methanol usually represents the most cost-effective means of developing those reserves. 

New business models are also emerging. The launch of giant liquefied natural gas (LNG) and gas-to-liquids (GTL) projects in the Middle East is increasing ethane availability from incremental natural gas production. Also under evaluation is the production of a range of chemicals based on giant methanol plants sourced with low-cost stranded natural gas. 

A typical long-term average traded price for methanol is in the vicinity of 150/tonne. For this, gas prices have to be below 2/GJ and preferably in the vicinity of 1/GJ. At this time, a typical traded price of gas is in the range of 5/GJ and this has stressed many operations which are force to pay this price. For this reason new gas-based world scale methanol plants have migrated to regions of low gas prices in the Middle East. 

The synthesis of MTBE also can be carried out using methanol and n-bu-tenes or mixed butanes, or n-butane as the C4 feed. These feeds are typical of Middle East situations, where there is an abundantly higher supply of LPG as compared to isobutene. Although these substitute C4 feeds are not commercially used for MTBE synthesis, their usage is feasible (Figure 3.27) [52]. 

Adding up all the contributions, it becomes apparent that the economics of the distributed case are equivalent to those for production in large-scale US plants, the capital of which has been paid for, which is remarkable. H owever, they can not beat the world-scale plant cost structure in the Middle East, primarily due to the differential in the feedstock cost. Based on this evaluation, it is not unreasonable to project some use of this distributed technology if methanol should pan out as a hydrogen carrier. 

Transportation of natural gas is sometimes difficult if consumers are far from gas fields. Overland pipelines are economical but are mostly impractical across oceans. Sometimes pipeline transport is also problematic for political reasons, for example, from the Middle East to Europe. Transportation of remote natural gas is then only possible as liquefied natural gas (LNG) or compressed natural gas (CNG), or, alternatively, the gas is converted into valuable (and easy to transport) liquid products such as methanol or diesel oil. 

Forecasted Middle East and Africa methanol danand byproduct guip. 

It is well known that this area of the world has large methanol feedstocks in the form of natural, associated, and refinery It is therefore not surprising that about 2 million ton new methanol production capacity came on-stream between 1983 and 1985 in the Persian Gulf and North Africa. There is very little current methanol demand in this part of the world, and most of the production is exported. At the present time, methanol production in the Middle East and Africa is dominated by Saudi Arabia and Libya. The plant in Libya started operations in 1978 and was expanded in early 1985. In early 1992, the Japanese consortium completed construction on a second plant at the Ar-Razi facility at A1 JubaiL In fact, there are some very preliminary plans to build a third methanol plant at Ar-Razi. In addition to the current methanol facilities in the Middle East, which includes the plant in Bahrain, we are aware of the following plans for other locations. 

For the near term, methanol demand in the Middle East and Africa is expected to increase only m line with traditional uses. However, a large increase is expected in 1994 and 1995 when some of the new MTBE plants are scheduled to come on-line. This will cause Middle East and Africa methanol demand to more than double during the 4 year study period, but methanol export availability is expected to continue at relatively high levels. 

Some of the outlying Western European nations, such as the Nordic countries, Spain, and Italy, rely mostfy on methanol imports from so-called deep-sea sources. These sources are as close as Libya and the former Eastern Bloc and as far away as Saudi Arabia and New Zealand. There are preliminary plans to build a world-scale methanol plant on the western coast of Norway that would be supplied by associated gas from a new offshore crude oil platform. Since the platform has not yet been built, nor has the delivery system to the mainland, we do not anticipate this plant to come on-stream until sometime in the middle to later part of this decade. The preliminary plans call for the associated gas to be delivered to the shoreline commingled with the crude oil and separated at that point. The plans also include a world-scale MTBE plant to utilize part of this methanol production. The only other new development in methanol production in Western Europe is that, since the reunification of Germany, the Leuna Werke plant in former East Germany (now eastern Germany) falls under Western European methanol-producing capability. 

---