Global methanol production capacity statistics

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An analysis last week by SRI Consulting, headquartered in Houston, USA, pointed out that as of the end of 2006, the world's total production capacity of methanol was close to 48 million tons, and the total demand reached 36.8 million tons. Driven by growth in downstream demand, world methanol production capacity is expected to reach approximately 64 million tons by 2010 and approximately 72 million tons in 2015. By then, global supply capacity will be greater than market demand, competition will intensify, and some uncompetitive small units or methanol units in areas with high raw material prices will be closed. According to the latest issue of the American Chemical Weekly, judging from the future construction trends of methanol plants, the world’s methanol production centers are shifting to South America, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, and these * * The target markets for methanol plants in and regions are mainly the Asia-Pacific region and China. At present, global methanol production is mainly concentrated in areas with abundant natural gas resources. * * , such as Trinidad, Chile, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and Russia. China has become a major producer of methanol, and methanol production mainly uses coal as raw material. Analysts pointed out that the regions with faster growth in methanol production capacity are the Middle East and South America, which have become important methanol production bases in the world. In the next few years, a large amount of production capacity will be put into production around the world. Methanol production capacity in the Middle East is expected to double by 2010, and China's production capacity will also double to 21.2 million tons/year by 2010. The current methanol production capacity in the Asia-Pacific region is 14.1 million tons/year, accounting for approximately 30% of the global total production capacity. ； The production capacity in the Middle East and Africa is 12.17 million tons/year, accounting for approximately 25% of the total production capacity ； The production capacity in North America is only 600,000 tons/year, accounting for 1% of the total ； The production capacity in South America is 12.56 million tons/year, accounting for approximately 26% of the total production capacity. ； The production capacity in other parts of the world is 8.54 million tons/year, accounting for approximately 18% of the total production capacity. According to analysis, although a large number of production capacities in North America have been closed, from a global perspective, the world's methanol production capacity growth rate will still reach 8.4%/year from 2006 to 2011, which is higher than the demand growth rate. Industry insiders pointed out that methanol-to-olefins and dimethyl ether will be the main driving force for the growth of methanol market demand in the future. As the largest application field of methanol, the demand for formaldehyde will grow at a rate of 3.2%/year, the demand for methyl methacrylate will grow at a rate of 4.7%/year, and the demand for acetic acid will grow at a rate of 6.4%/year. Coupled with the growth of new uses such as direct use as fuel (excluding methyl tert-butyl ether), world methanol demand will grow at an average annual rate of 5.6% in the next five years.