Platts to launch additions to US methanol coverage

Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, will expand its coverage of the US methanol market to provide further transparency to the market, effective Nov. 4.

M3 forward assessment

Platts will launch a forward spot price assessment for methanol loading on an FOB USG basis during the third month from the date of publication (M3). The new assessment will complement existing M1 (current month), and M2 (forward month) methanol assessments.

The M3 assessment will roll forward to the next month five calendar days prior to the end of the month, as with the existing M1 and M2 assessments.

Details of the proposed assessment are as follows:

Pricing information for material with other specifications and terms will be normalized accordingly.

The proposed assessments will reflect spot values on a daily basis at 13:30 Central Standard Time, and will follow the US publishing calendar.

Carbon intensity

Separately, Platts will start data basing conventional methanol carbon intensity, based on S&P's proprietary methodology.

The carbon intensity will include emissions from well to FOB US Gulf Coast considering 100% production from natural gas feedstock. End-use combustion emissions are also included to facilitate comparisons with greener alternatives.

The emission estimates considered include natural gas feedstock supply chain emissions to methanol plant gate (Scope 3 upstream emissions), methanol production from natural gas conversion processes within the methanol plant (Scope 1 direct emissions and Scope 2 indirect emissions) and methanol end-use combustion (Scope 3 downstream emissions).

The emission estimates for natural gas feedstock (Scope 3 upstream) account for production, processing, and transport of the natural gas supply chain from well to methanol plant gate.

Direct (combustion and process) emissions are generally extracted from US EPA GHGRP while indirect (electricity) emissions are estimated considering the electricity required by typical methanol production processes obtained from S&P Global Commodity Insight’s Process Economic Program (PEP) reports and from S&P Global Commodity Insight’s North American regional grid intensity factors.

Methanol production per plant is obtained from S&P Global Commodity Insight’s Competitive Cost & Margin Analytics (CCMA) Model.

Total blended USGC FOB carbon intensity is then weighted by production of methanol from each facility.

Platts methanol assessments in the US currently appear on Platts Connect, in Europe and Americas Petrochemicalscan and on Petrochemical Alert fixed pages PCA 1568, PCA 0872, PCA 0347, PCA 1566, PCA 0199, PCA 0198 .

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