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Collection: Fracked Fuel & Petrochemical Projects in the Pacific Northwest

Your Three-Minute Introduction to Methanol in the Pacific Northwest

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kalama jay inslee methanol tacoma LNG

Methanol has been getting a lot of attention in the Pacific Northwest lately, and with good reason. Three methanol plants proposed along the Columbia River and Puget Sound could make our region the country’s top methanol producer and exporter, while heavily taxing our iconic water systems and upping our air and carbon pollution loads. Sightline pulled together a … Read more

How Industry and Regulators Kept Public in the Dark After 2014 LNG Explosion in Washington

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Nearly two years ago, an explosion and massive gas leak at a liquid natural gas (LNG) facility in Plymouth, Washington, thirty miles south of the Tri-Cities, injured five workers and forced hundreds of people to evacuate their homes. To this day, state and federal oversight agencies have not published the findings of their investigations into the … Read more

Tacoma Steering into Uncertain Waters

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thin green line audio documentary

Tacoma may soon be home to the Northwest’s next liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, with a $275 million plant positioned to move forward after the City of Tacoma published the project’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) in October 2015. Most observers have treated the project as a done deal, but the FEIS contains some alarming … Read more

Video: Fighting Dirty Energy in Tacoma and Beyond

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Last week, Sightline’s policy director Eric de Place discussed the alarming growth of oil train traffic in the Northwest, as well as the implications of large-scale methanol production in Tacoma. Eric looked at the costs and consequences of these new projects proposed for Tacoma and examined how these projects are connected to a range of … Read more

Propane Terminal Added to Refinery Proposal in Longview

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The latest wave in the tsunami of the Northwest fossil fuel export schemes has washed up in the form of a propane-by-rail facility on the Columbia River. A firm currently calling itself Waterside Energy recently announced plans for a $450 million liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), or propane, export project at the Port of Longview in Washington. The proposal comes on top of a revamped plan by the company to develop an $800 million oil refining operation there to be called Riverside Refinery.

The proposal

At full capacity, the propane export and storage facility, called “Washington Energy Storage and Transfer,” would serve one train each day with 75,000 barrels of propane delivered from Canada and North Dakota. The fuel would then be pumped from rail tank cars into the terminal’s storage tanks, which could store up to 1.1 million barrels. (The site would include five spherical tanks capable of holding 23,000 barrels each, one 550,000-barrel tank, and two 222,000-barrel refrigerated tanks.) Four times a month, on average, the fuel would be piped from the refrigerated tanks onto a ship for export to Asia.

The project would be built on 75 acres of private land, but the Port has jurisdiction over the underground pipeline, rail corridor, and wharf needed for development and operations. The terminal would also require permits through Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC). 

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Why China Wants Methanol from the Northwest

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The Northwest is currently deciding whether to allow the Chinese government to build three export-oriented refineries in our region—specifically at Kalama and Tacoma, Washington, and near Clatskanie, Oregon. They would more than triple total US methanol production in order to fuel plastics manufacturing abroad. In our first installment on the subject, Sightline explored the fundamentals of these planned projects. Here, we will examine some key features of the industry.

What is methanol?

Methanol (CH3OH) is a simple alcohol—a light, colorless, and flammable liquid at room temperature. Although methanol is present in the environment in small amounts, we also synthesize it for industrial purposes from fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) or biomass (wood and plant material). We use methanol for transportation fuel (biodiesel), portable fuel cells, wastewater treatment, and to manufacture common products like formaldehyde, acetic acid, plastics, paints, resins, and insulations.

What happens at a methanol refinery?

To understand the methanol projects proposed for Oregon and Washington, you’ll have to endure a little chemistry lesson. (It won’t hurt much.)

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What Is the Jordan Cove Export Project?

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An oversized carbon-fuel project may be coming to a small town on the Oregon Coast. A Canadian energy company wants to build a liquid natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Coos Bay, Oregon, to ship tremendous volumes of natural gas overseas. To serve the terminal with natural gas, a pipeline company would build hundreds of miles of pipeline through 72 miles of public forests, 400 water bodies, 700 parcels of private land, and the habitats of 32 endangered species.

The Northwest is becoming a prized location for LNG export development owing to the savings on shipping to Asia compared to other parts of the US. Northwest communities are wondering whether most of the benefits of natural gas will go overseas while the detriments will impact the Pacific Northwest’s environment.

In this article, we take a look at the scope, finances, and political landscape of the Jordan Cove Energy project as an example of LNG development in the Pacific Northwest.

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How Tesoro’s Petrochem Plans May Threaten Anacortes & the Salish Sea

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In July 2014, Tesoro Corporation announced plans to build a xylene extraction facility at the site of its existing oil refinery in Anacortes, Washington. The $400 million facility would be capable of producing 15,000 barrels per day for export to Asia in oceangoing vessels.

Yet xylene is a little-known chemical, and it’s worth asking: what is the risk of xylene to Northwest communities?

In case you skipped Sightline’s 101 course, xylene is liquid petrochemical distilled primarily from partly refined crude oil. It’s a starting point for plastic bottles, polyester fibers, food packaging, paint, rubber, and more. But before xylene becomes a Coke bottle with your name on it, it would start as crude oil that is partially refined into “reformate.” (Reformate is easier to produce from light oils, such as the Bakken shale oil delivered by train to the site.)

Then it would undergo an extraction process at the Puget Sound refinery, which involves manufacturing, transferring, treating, and storing the chemical. Finally, every couple of weeks, the refinery operators would load a tanker vessel at Tesoro’s Anacortes wharf and ship it across the Pacific.

All by a company with a less than spectacular safety record. If any of the operations resulted in a spill, the xylene could pose meaningful risks both to the residents of nearby Anacortes and to the non-human inhabitants of the Salish Sea. Even without incident, emissions of xylene could contribute to air pollution and illness.

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What Methanol Means for the Northwest

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gas industry oil pipeline

China is aiming to construct and operate three methanol refineries in Oregon and Washington in a move that would turn the Northwest into the nation’s leading producer and exporter of methanol. The Chinese officials promoting the projects are working in partnership with senior US officials, including Washington Governor Jay Inslee.

A new company called Northwest Innovation Works—an offspring of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Holdings, which develops and markets new technologies—has hatched plans to develop three methanol production plants with storage facilities in the region. Many analysts predict that methanol use will increase dramatically in the coming years and industry backers argue that it presents an economic opportunity. Yet methanol is little understood by most of the public, and its production raises some risks and concerns.

In this article and a companion piece to follow, Sightline will explore some of the fundamentals about these new methanol facilities—and what they mean for the Northwest.

The nickel summary

If they are built, the Northwest refineries would receive US and Canadian natural gas transported by pipeline to newly-built facilities in Kalama and Tacoma, Washington and Clatskanie, Oregon where the natural gas would be converted to the chemical methanol, sometimes known as wood alcohol. The methanol would then be shipped to Asia, where it will be used primarily as a “feedstock”—the raw material—to create olefins, petrochemicals that are in turn used to make polymers for the manufacture of plastics.

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What is Xylene, and What Does it Mean for Puget Sound?

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Puget Sound sunset, by Ed Suominen, cc.
Puget Sound sunset by Ed Suominen used under CC BY-NC 2.0

It’s a safe bet that most people have no idea what C6H4(CH3)2 refers to. It’s a chemical compound that is better known—when it is known at all—as xylene, a niche product of oil refining soon to go into development on the shores of Puget Sound. It’s a change that has potential implications for the health of the Salish Sea, for oil trains, and perhaps even for gasoline prices.

Because most people know so little about the product, we thought it would be useful to share a short course on it. So with that, welcome to “Xylene 101.”

What is xylene, exactly?

Let’s get some quick and dirty chemistry out of the way. (It won’t hurt.) Xylene refers to a group of three different isomers (molecules with the same chemical formula but different chemical structures): orthoxylene, metaxylene, and paraxylene, all of which are petrochemicals. In a process known as catalytic reforming, refiners distill petroleum naphtha (chemicals found in partly refined crude oil) and then convert it into a high octane liquid hydrocarbon called reformate. Traditionally, oil refiners blend reformate with gasoline and jet fuel to increase octane levels, but it can also serve as the “feedstock” for chemicals like xylene. (Xylenes can also be produced by coal carbonization in the manufacture of petcoke.)

Still with us? Good.

So, what do xylenes mean for Washington?

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