MOSCOW (MRC) -- Celanese and Mitsui & Co. have entered into an exclusive arrangement to explore a joint venture for a planned methanol unit at Celanese' integrated chemical plant in Bishop, Texas, as per Apic-online.
Celanese has already filed for air permits with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for the unit, which is expected to have 1.3-million t/y of methanol capacity. A schedule for the project was not given.
A final decision to build the plant will depend on several factors, including prevailing methanol market conditions as well as cost of construction, Celanese noted.
Celanese earlier said the new methanol unit would use abundant, low-cost natural gas in the U.S. Gulf Coast as feedstock and would be similar in scope and scale to a methanol facility currently being built at its Clear Lake, Texas, site as a 50-50 joint venture with Mitsui. Start-up of the Clear Lake unit is expected in October 2015.
In addition, the two companies have entered into an amended five-year arrangement for Celanese to purchase methanol from Mitsui, upon completion of the methanol unit in Clear Lake.
As MRC wrote previously, initially the operations at the new methanol unit in Bishop was scheduled to begin in mid-2015.
Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Texas, Celanese employs approximately 7,500 employees worldwide and had 2014 net sales of USD6.8 billion.
Mitsui Chemicals,a Japanese chemical company, is a part of the Mitsui conglomerate. The company has a turnover of around 15 billion USD and has business interests in Japan, Europe, China, Southeast Asia and the USA. The company mainly deals in performance materials, petro and basic chemicals and functional polymeric materials.
MRC