Tag: natural gas

By the end of October the ammonia market was facing an acute shortage of spot tonnage, reflected in a $60/t jump in the Tampa price for November. The benchmark Tampa price increased for the sixth straight month to its highest since February 2023 as the global ammonia supply crunch deepened. The surge at Tampa was said to be driven by good demand in the US for direct application combined with a lack of supply. Contributing factors included Nutrien shutting down its nitrogen production in Trinidad, potentially removing around 85,000 tonnes/month from the market. So far, there is no suggestion that other producers in Trinidad will follow suit, and they may even benefit from a boost natural-gas supply given the Nutrien outage, although it is unclear whether the spare gas will be directed to ammonia as opposed to other demand sources.

Ammonia prices in both hemispheres had levelled out by the end of August, with the exception of a few marginal upticks in some regions on the basis of the latest supply-demand dynamics. All eyes are now on September’s Tampa settlement, which should spell out the extent of the upside pressure set to emerge over the coming weeks.

Egypt is looking towards hugely increased LNG imports to try and reduce domestic shortages. A second floating regasification and storage unit arrived in May and two more are expected to be in place soon. Reuters reports that the country has reached agreements with energy firms and trading houses to buy 150 to 160 cargoes of […]

Methanol demand is rising again after a few years of relative stagnation, but with the Chinese MTO boom largely over, it looks to be energy uses which will drive most future demand.

Achema says that it plans to “temporarily” suspend ammonia production at its site at Jonava from May 15th, due to the volatility of natural gas prices and competition from cheaper foreign imports. It currently plans to resume production in 3Q 2025. The facility has been operating at reduced capacity since 2021, and Lithuanian lawmakers have discussed converting the site to explosive grade ammonium nitrate production as part of a European rearmament programme.

Global gas demand has returned to growth after the supply shock of 2022-23, but geopolitical tensions and short supply in LNG markets.

The Kazakh government has approved the construction of a new ammonia and urea plant in the country’s Mangistau region, on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. Construction will be carried out by a joint venture between QazaqGaz National Company and ESTA Construction under Qazesta Fertilizers Ltd. The total investment for the project is $1.35 billion, with construction expected to be completed within three and a half years. The plant’s annual production capacity is projected to reach up to 700,000 t/a of urea and 420,000 t/a of ammonia, adding value to the country’s natural gas production and helping to substitute domestic production for foreign imports of nitrogen fertilizer. Despite a national demand of 3.2 million t/a, domestic production currently only meets about half of that need.

New carbon capture-based plants could see US nitrogen capacity jump over the next few years, but Trump attacks on IRA tax credits may scupper some ongoing projects.

India’s push to replace its sizeable urea imports with home grown capacity continues, but may not keep pace with rising domestic demand.

Support for ammonia prices in markets east of Suez eroded during February. The ongoing bubble of support seen in NW Europe remained just about intact, though news of further declines at Tampa for March and slumping natural-gas prices should begin to eat away at any remaining support in the West. After declining $70/t during the first two months of 2025, the Tampa settlement between Yara and Mosaic was revised down a further $40/t for March, imposing further downward pressure on f.o.b. values in Trinidad and the US Gulf.