Lake Charles Methanol II plans $3.2B low-carbon blue methanol plant in Southwest Louisiana
17 February 2024
Lake Charles Methanol II, LLC (LCM) plans to invest $3.24 billion to construct a new manufacturing plant that will produce low-carbon intensity methanol and other chemicals at the Port of Lake Charles, Louisiana. The company plans to use advanced auto thermal gas reforming technology and employ carbon capture and secure geologic storage to produce low-carbon hydrogen for conversion to methanol.
The proposed facility would reform natural gas and renewable gas feedstocks into hydrogen, while capturing carbon dioxide, which would then be used to produce about 3.6 million tons per year of methanol.
Lake Charles Methanol plans to work with a third party to capture and sequester about 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, which would reduce the carbon intensity of the hydrogen for synthesis into low carbon intensity methanol.
The project is currently undergoing a FEED study and regulatory permitting. A final investment decision and start of construction are expected in mid-2024. Construction and commissioning of the facility are expected to take about three-and-a-half years, which would allow commercial operations to begin in late 2027.
To secure the project in Louisiana, Louisiana Economic Development (LED) offered a competitive incentives package that includes the comprehensive workforce development solutions of LED FastStart. It also includes a Performance-Based Grant of $5 million to be used for reimbursement of company expenditures for infrastructure needs. The company is also expected to participate in Louisiana’s Industrial Tax Exemption and Quality Jobs programs.
Some folk here will be against this in principle, for perfectly understandable reasons considering the appalling record of the fossil fuel firms and their tendency to lie at every opportunity.
My own view is that you should not chuck out the baby with the bathwater, and it is plain that perfectly acceptable sequestration can be done.
Just as Adam Smith noted all those years ago, capitalism is dependent on appropriate control and legislation, as companies will surely conspire at every opportunity against the public interest.
Unfortunately we now live in a society which is capitalist in name only, as a standing excuse against decent funding for anything worthwhile, whilst we actually operate a corporatist ogilopoly, with ever smaller taxes the more wealthy people are, almost no accountability and their speculations covered by Government to 'save the system'
If anyone is interested, have a read of Simon Johnson, ex head economist of the IMF, for a description of how this operates.
Another notable critic who is obviously some sort of communist is Warren Buffet.
Posted by: Davemart | 17 February 2024 at 12:53 AM
Plenty of empty wells in Louisiana and Texas to store carbon dioxide, you store until you need it for materials or fuels, from a power plant you can store the nitrogen and the carbon, make materials fuels and fertilizer ...works fine.
Posted by: SJC | 17 February 2024 at 09:14 AM
@SJC
Just so.
Critics have rightly noted that sequestration or the possibility of it has often been used as an excuse, for some time in the future put-off ery, as it costs more than simply venting CO2, which in their usual socially conscious way fossil fuel companies have been keen on, with alternatively using it to pump into fossil fuel reservoirs to extract still more.
But that does not mean that it can't be done, and what is more effectively and at reasonable cost, although not zero, which in an uncosted regime for GHG emissions and ineffective legislation is what it has been competing with.
Unfortunately capitalism unless properly regulated always looks for 'free' ie not nailed down and protected resources first, stealing whatever is to hand before worrying about niceties like efficiency of production etc.
From the plundering of the monastries to finance the rise of the iron industry for armament under Henry the VIII to the enclosure acts and the declaration that Australia was Terra Nullis the same tendency to thieve as a first recourse was evident.
In that respect by pumping unlimited quantities of crap into the atmosphere regardless of the true cost in pollution and GHG and potentially catastrophic climate change the fossil fuel companies are simply carrying on a long, if hardly proud, tradition.
Posted by: Davemart | 17 February 2024 at 09:53 AM