Canada's Methanex is "making solid progress" on its plans to increase its global methanol production capacity by up to 1 million mt/year by the end of this year, CEO John Floren said in a statement late Wednesday.
In New Zealand, the company is in the process of restarting a 500,000 mt/year plant at Waitara Valley. It said previously it would start late in the third quarter. The plant was idled in 2008 due to unfavorable economics at the time.
Methanex is also debottlenecking its Motunui facilities, to allow full production by the end of the year. The company has two methanol plants at Motunui with combined capacity of 1.6 million mt/year currently.
In Medicine Hat, Alberta, Methanex is debottlenecking its 470,000 mt/year methanol plant, which the company expects will increase production capacity by 90,000 mt/year.
Methanex said it was still in the process of relocating two Chile plants to Geismar, Louisiana. Its 1 million mt/year Geismar 1 plant is expected to start by the end of 2014, followed by Geismar 2 plant in early 2016 with a capacity of 1 million mt/year.
The 1.3 million mt/year capacity Damietta plant in Egypt, in which Methanex owns 60%, has faced natural gas supply restrictions since mid 2012, the statement said. It said the "situation may persist in the future and become more acute during the summer months, when electricity demand is at its peak."
The company expects natural gas supply issues to continue at Trinidad, where it has an 875,000 mt/year plant and a 63.1% stake in the 1.125 million mt/year Atlas plant. The company estimated around 57,000 mt of lost production in the second quarter.
Methanex sold 2.01 million mt of methanol in the three months ended June 30, up 9.9% from the first quarter, according to the statement. Methanex produced 1.02 million mt of that.
The company's average realized price was $425/mt in Q2, up from $412/mt in the Q1.
Methanex estimates that methanol demand excluding methanol-to-olefins facilities is around 54 million mt/year, and expects demand growth to be strong.
