Friday, March 4, 2016

Active rigs:

	3/4/2016	03/04/2015	03/04/2014	03/04/2013	03/04/2012
Active Rigs	35	114	190	183	207

RBN Energy: Any Credence in a Near-Term Methanol Revival?

Times are tough in the methanol market. Posted and spot prices for methanol have continued falling (to levels not seen since 2010). New methanol capacity, planned during the good ol’ days, has been coming online, further depressing prices. And while more methanol-to-olefins (MTO) plants are starting up in China—the product’s biggest market—they are running at far less than full speed. But one bright spot for U.S. methanol producers is dirt-cheap natural gas, providing U.S. plants a competitive advantage versus those in the rest of the world. Today, we examine recent developments in the methanol market and consider what may be coming next.

We begin with a brief recap of what methanol is, and how it’s produced and used. As we said more than two years ago in Cheap Trick, methanol is a basic chemical feedstock. It looks like clear water (if only we could have worked that into today’s CCR-related blog title!) and it’s produced primarily from natural gas using a steam methane reformer process (though it also can be made from coal and other hydrocarbons).

About two-thirds of methanol’s worldwide demand is tied to its traditional use in the petrochemicals market, making formaldehyde, acetic acid and petrochemical intermediates that, in turn, are used to make plastics, synthetic fibers, paints, resins and solvents, among many other things. 

The balance of the methanol produced annually is used either in MTO plants (most of them in China) that directly convert methanol into ethylene or polyethylene; in methanol-to-propylene (MTP) plants; as a fuel (again, mostly in China); or as a fuel additive. For example, methanol can be blended into gasoline. It also can be used to produce dimethyl ether (DME), an alternative motor fuel and sometimes replacement for propane; methyl-tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), an octane booster (banned in U.S. markets); or tert-amyl methyl-ether (TAME), a fuel oxygenate.

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Noonan On Trump

The op-ed here. I've often thought that Donald Trump was running as a 3rd party candidate who co-opted the Republican Party. Instead of running like Ross Perot as a third-party candidate, he knew that to have a chance, he had to be nominated by one of the two parties.