Fairway Methanol LLC, a US-based 50-50 joint venture between Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and Celanese Corporation, a global specialty materials and chemical company, has begun the production of methanol by using carbon dioxide captured from Celanese’s Clear Lake, Texas site. Fairway Methanol is expected to capture 180,000 metric tons of CO₂ and produce 130,000 metric tons of low-carbon methanol per year, which leads its annual production capacity to 1.63 million metric tons per year.

Fairway Methanol LLC Methanol factory

Celanese is actively leveraging CCU to offer low-carbon options across its Acetyl Chain and Engineered Materials products to help global customers meet the growing demand for more sustainable and circular solutions. The products will be launched under the ECO-CC name and be transparently supported through mass balance tracking and life cycle assessment processes.

Carbon capture and utilization unit.

This additional methanol production, using industry-derived CO₂, is one of the carbon capture and utilization (CCU) projects that Mitsui has undertaken. The concept behind these projects considers CO₂ as a resource that can be reused as a raw material, thus realizing carbon recycling and helping to reduce CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere.

This project provides Mitsui with another low-carbon solution in its methanol business portfolio, following the bio-methanol (mass-balance basis) production at Fairway Methanol and the e-methanol production at Solar Park Kasso, Denmark.

In its Medium-term Management Plan 2026, Mitsui has identified Global Energy Transition as one of its Key Strategic Initiatives. In the course of building a next-generation fuel value chain, Mitsui assumes that CCU fosters circularity by using emitted CO₂ to create various chemical products that can reduce the need for fossil fuels.

The Clear Lake methanol unit was commissioned in October 2015 as a joint venture between Celanese and Mitsui & Co., Ltd. The unit utilizes abundant, low-cost natural gas in the US Gulf Coast region as a feedstock. The joint venture operates as Fairway Methanol LLC, with both Celanese and Mitsui maintaining a 50/50 ownership.