As part of its drive to take advantage of the shale gas boom, LyondellBasell has restarted a methanol plant at its Channelview site in Texas. The polyolefins giant closed the U.S. facility with capacity of 780,000 t/y in 2004, when natural gas prices were at a peak.

"The methanol plant re-start is the first in a series of U.S. Gulf Coast projects to take advantage of the natural gas price advantage that we enjoy from shale gas," said Patrick Quarles, senior vice president of intermediates and derivatives." He added that the methanol plant and "other significant debottleneck projects" will bring capacity into the system earlier and at "substantially lower cost" than building entirely new facilities.

LyondellBasell said earlier that restarting the Channelview methanol plant would cost around $150 million.

Early in 2013, the U.S. group said its refinery at Houston, Texas, would be retrofitted to accommodate a greater percentage of light domestic and heavy Canadian crude oil.

Other projects being implemented in Texas, to cash in on the cheap gas trend, include expansion of ethylene capacity at La Porte, Channelview and Corpus Christi - adding 816,000 t of annual capacity - as well as expansion of a polyethylene plant in Matagorda County.