THE Atlas Methanol plant at Point Lisas will still be the largest in the world even when the much-touted Methanol Holdings Trinidad Ltd. (MHTL) M5000 facility begins producing.

The reason?

Atlas’ two shareholders, of which bp is one with a 36.9 per cent interest, are already de-bottlenecking the plant to push methanol output up to around 1.85 million tonnes a year, says bpTTINSIDER.

Says a pleased Chris Allen, Commercial Director, Gas To Products Growth in bpTT’s Market Development unit: “We have installed two pieces of equipment which will allow us to increase capacity by recycling some purged gas back to the inlet and putting in an iron exchange resin bed.”

Such quick action is eminently understandable, in light of the prevail world prices for methanol.

“The dynamics of the methanol industry are such that we are seeing significant growth, largely driven by China, but also driven by high natural gas prices.

US-based methanol producers have become in the last few years the high-cost marginal producers, basically setting the price for the industry worldwide.”

It would have been commercially inept not to take advantage of that fact that the shareholders (the Methanex Corporation holds the 63.1 per cent majority share) readily agreed to the US $10 million expenditure required.

Overall, Atlas has had a very successful first year in business, largely due, insists Allen, to the fact that it happens to be located in Trinidad: “We did have some technical problems with the reformer system and the gas-cooled reactor, things like that.

But we have a fantastic team at Atlas, headed by the Chief Executive Officer, Tony Chan Tack, who has had many years of experience in this business: “The depth of knowledge and capability in methanol matters to be found in Trinidad is the best in the world. I venture to say nobody else could have built and operated the first mega-methanol plant in the world.”