Trinidad and Tobago's newest petrochemical plant–a facility producing the liquid fertiliser referred to as UAN, successfully made its first product on January 19 and will send its first shipment to market in a few days. The new plant owned by Methanol Holdings Trinidad Ltd (MHTL) is the second stage of a US$1.7 billion ammonia, urea and melamine (AUM) production complex scheduled for completion by the end of this year. UAN is a solution of urea and ammonium nitrate in water and is principally used as a fertiliser. Presenting an update on the overall AUM project at the Energy and Entrepreneurship Conference held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Tuesday, Vishard Chandool, Business Development Manager at MHTL, said construction and commissioning of the facility was moving three months ahead of schedule and is well within budget.
He said when testing and full commissioning is completed, the UAN component of the complex will be able to produce 1.5 million tonnes of product annually. The melamine component of the facility will begin production later this year and will generate 60,000 metric tones of melamine. He said melamine was an important input in several industries including resin manufacture, paints and plastics. He said these are only a few of the areas that local investors should consider, as they will have a competitive advantage when compared to other international producers since they will have easy access to this valuable resource and input. Chandool said the company believed it was important to diversify its production based to include other upstream components of the petrochemical industry.
MHTL also operates several other large petrochemical plants including the largest methanol production plant in the world–the M5000 plant, which can produce 5,000 metric tones of methanol per day. This plant was commissioned on November 2005. The company is a major producer and exporter of methanol and is the largest exporter to the United States. The company also controls 23 percent of the global trade in methanol. The first stage of the mega AUM project was completed in May 2009 and currently has an annual capacity of 616,000 metric tones of ammonia. The production complex includes storage capacity for 28 days to add to MHTL's global marketing capability to respond faster to customer requests. This gives the company the flexibility to add to its existing storage in Europe and the USA.
He said apart from the 3,000 workers on site during the construction, the project would create 400 permanent, high paying, highly skilled jobs for Trinidad and Tobago nationals, as well as 400 additional indirect jobs for sub contractors as well as temporary workers who may be hired to take on specific projects over the lifetime of the facility. He noted that keeping the project on schedule and within budget was a serious challenge for the T&T staff, as they always tried to keep the local content of the project as high as possible–this was about 18 percent of the project cost. "Of all the projects were have successfully embarked locally, this was the first time we had to source contractors from outside the country. We faced a shortage of labour as well as competent contractors. We were forced to hire a foreign contractor to maintain the aggressive construction schedule we planned," he added.
"This philosophy of efficiency has been translated into the operation of the facility and we are determined to be a low cost, world class competitor that focuses on safety and quality." "Methanol to Power is a convincing alternative to LNG and is a safe and inexpensive way to transport the clean power generating capabilities of natural gas. We are now looking at alternatives and opportunities for us to apply this new knowledge into commercial settings such as using methanol as an alternative to many fuels–including natural gas," he added.
