A Pur­chase and Sales agree­ment has been reached that will al­low the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go to ac­quire blue methanol from the US based IGP’s Gulf Coast Methanol project.

In a re­lease on Tues­day, the NGC an­nounced that its sub­sidiary NGC Petro­chem­i­cals Lim­it­ed had com­plet­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions with Gulf Coast Methanol 1, LLC and its par­ent IGP Methanol LLC and sealed the deal.

NGC said, “This mile­stone achieve­ment marks the cul­mi­na­tion of sev­er­al months of col­lab­o­ra­tion, fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of a term sheet signed by the par­ties in De­cem­ber 2021. The new agree­ment means NGC will soon be able to pur­chase blue methanol—a low-car­bon petro­chem­i­cal com­mod­i­ty—for trad­ing through its ex­pand­ing en­er­gy mar­ket­ing and trad­ing port­fo­lio.”

The com­pa­ny’s pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan said, “NGC con­tin­ues to prove its un­equiv­o­cal com­mit­ment to the clean en­er­gy tran­si­tion through part­ner­ships such as these. We are fol­low­ing glob­al mar­kets close­ly, and see the enor­mous po­ten­tial val­ue to be tapped in the area of blue and green en­er­gy com­mod­i­ty trad­ing. This part­ner­ship with IGP Methanol gives us a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand our foothold com­mer­cial­ly—as we en­ter new en­er­gy mar­kets_and ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly, as we fur­ther grow our trad­ing net­work be­yond the shores of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Chair­man of IGP Methanol, James S Lam­oureaux, said, “IGP val­ues its grow­ing strate­gic part­ner­ship with NGC and their lead­er­ship in the ul­tralow car­bon and re­new­able chem­i­cals and fu­els. This part­ner­ship val­i­dates our vi­sion of de­liv­er­ing ul­tralow car­bon and re­new­able, hy­dro­gen-based en­er­gy to ma­jor com­pa­nies around the world to help them meet their car­bon goals. We are ex­cit­ed to be lead­ing this next step to a ful­ly re­new­able fu­ture.”

NGC said the in­clu­sion of blue methanol in its port­fo­lio will bol­ster the com­pa­ny’s rep­u­ta­tion as an emerg­ing play­er in the glob­al clean en­er­gy space, and re­gion­al leader in cham­pi­oning the Green Agen­da and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The move, the com­pa­ny said, is the lat­est in a suite of ini­tia­tives be­ing pur­sued by NGC and the NGC Group to pave the way to­wards a car­bon-neu­tral fu­ture for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to the NGC, the blue methanol will come from IGP Methanol’s first world-scale blue methanol plant in Louisiana, which is be­ing de­vel­oped to sup­ply the rapid­ly grow­ing and un­met glob­al de­mand for ul­tralow-car­bon methanol. The first plant is ex­pect­ed to come on stream in 2026.

The plant will adopt the Top­soe Syn­Cor Blue Methanol tech­nol­o­gy, which will utilise hy­dro­gen to pow­er its process. This sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duces the amount of CO2 emit­ted from methanol pro­cess­ing. NGC ex­plained the plant’s pro­duced car­bon diox­ide will be re­moved and di­rect­ed ei­ther to se­ques­tra­tion or for re-use by car­bon tech com­pa­nies lo­cat­ed ad­ja­cent to the plant, in­clud­ing the plan to re­cy­cle the CO2 in­to re­new­able green methanol.