Via Bloomberg, this story:
...Iranian methanol exports to China — which have so far flown under Washington’s radar — may be subject to scrutiny after the US threatened to impose secondary sanctions on buyers of the country’s oil.
About 40% of China’s methanol imports, around 5.2 million tons, came from Iran last year, Kpler data show. The chemical compound made from natural gas is used as a feedstock to create olefins, which are in turn used to make plastics. Methanol-to-olefin, or MTO, plants are the biggest buyers of cargoes originating in Iran, according to price-reporting and analytics firm ICIS.
“Iranian methanol is almost the only efficient way” for MTO units to get enough supply, said Ann Sun, a senior analyst at ICIS. Around 60% of standalone Chinese MTO plants are located on the coast, and it’s those facilities that rely on imported methanol, she said.
The MTO process was developed and commercialized in China, with the world’s first such plant built in Baotou in Inner Mongolia in 2010, according to a research paper published by the American Chemical Society. Methanol has become an important alternative to traditional feedstocks used to produce plastics including naphtha...
The global supply chain is fascinating and flows in so many directions...
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