IGP Methanol LLC was granted a title V Air Quality Permit by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality for their Gulf Coast Methanol facility, located in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.
The Gulf Coast Methanol Park will consist of four identical methanol Plants or "trains" each producing 1.8 million tons per year of methanol from natural gas, making it the world's largest permitted methanol production facility. When complete, Gulf Coast Methanol will produce 7.2 million tons of methanol per year. Production is planned to begin in late 2020.
The facility will employ up to 1,500 construction workers per plant, and over 325 well-paid permanent operation and maintenance jobs. Gulf Coast Methanol will bring tens of millions of dollars in wages, taxes and port fees into Plaquemines Parish.
James S. Lamoureaux, IGP's Managing Director stated, "We have invested years of work and very significant capital to design and engineer what we believe is the largest, and at the same time, the lowest-emission methanol plant in the world, per ton of production."
"Several US Fortune 500 companies are involved as supply partners to help develop this project. IGP has already selected technology and engineering providers, natural gas supply, gas transportation, oxygen and nitrogen supply, as well as storage and loading partners," Lamoureaux added. IGP will also be building common services infrastructure, and managing operations and maintenance.
IGP is focused on methanol as a clean-burning fuel and base feedstock chemical for thousands of products we use every day. Methanol has tremendous potential as a drop-in fuel that can replace gasoline and diesel in transportation, and replace LPG, coal, wood, and kerosene in cooking fuel and industrial boilers. It can also replace diesel in railways and power generation. We believe methanol will be a transformative fuel in ocean freight as well, reducing emissions by 95% as opposed to bunker fuel. In addition, methanol is also the only liquid carrier for hydrogen fuel cells, greatly reducing the costs and complexity of delivering and storing hydrogen for the hydrogen economy.