At night in the Lingang Industrial Park in Dongfang City, Hainan, the lights on the tower remained on. Natural gas runs through the pipeline, which is converted into methanol after leaving the facility and then shipped south. The sea breeze brings salty taste into the factory area and also brings a new plan. The equipment here in Toshima has been running for almost twenty years, and now we need to build a new one.

The whereabouts of 1.7 billion cubic meters of gas

The approval documents are not completed in a day. China BlueChem recently announced that the board of directors has approved the feasibility study report for the 1.2 million tons/year natural gas to methanol project. The project is located in Dongfang City, Hainan Province, with CNOOC Fudao Limited as the implementing entity. It is situated in the chemical concentration area of Dongfang Port Industrial Park.

Build a new 1.2 million tons/year methanol plant, complete with utilities and auxiliary production facilities. The main raw material is natural gas, and this device needs to digest 1.716 billion cubic meters per year. In September 2026, the Department of Ecology and Environment of Hainan Province agreed in principle to the environmental impact assessment report for the project, with an annual operating time of 8000 hours for the installation. The gas source has also been locked in, and production can be organized through the integrated collaboration of CNOOC upstream and downstream, without the need to start a new stove for raw materials and transportation.

Not just methanol

Put this device into the existing plates in Toshima to see the weight more clearly. The first phase of Hainan with a capacity of 600000 tons was completed in 2006, and the second phase with a capacity of 800000 tons was put into operation in 2010. Currently, the methanol production capacity is 1.4 million tons. After the new project is completed, the company's total methanol production capacity will increase to 2.6 million tons, and the annual consumption of natural gas will exceed 5 billion cubic meters. Funds will be obtained through the combination of self owned funds and bank loans. Keywords: natural gas to methanol, Hainan

With the increase in production capacity, the position of methanol supply in the South China market will be more stable; The longer layer is that there is a surplus in the raw material side, and downstream businesses of high-end new materials and high value-added chemicals can be laid down this chain. The direction also follows the domestic industrial policies, and the layout of the natural gas chemical industry chain will be more complete as a result. To be clear, we have only completed the feasibility study approval step and there is still some way to go before the construction starts in December 2027. Any new developments in the construction process will have to wait for further announcements.Editor/Min Jing