South Korea's Hyundai Engineering has been selected to design a Russian methanol plant, with it eventually expecting a contract worth at least $1bn to build it for private-sector oil firm Gaz Sintez.
The 1.83mn t/yr plant will be located in the Baltic port of Vysotsk, 875km northwest of Moscow. The design contract, which was signed late last week in Moscow, is valued at $12mn.
Vysotsk hosts a base of the Russian navy's Baltic fleet, as well as a Russian oil firm Lukoil's oil products terminal. Russian independent natural gas producer Novatek last month began exporting LNG from its 660,000 t/yr liquefaction plant near Vysotsk and may add a second train by the end of 2020.
Construction of the methanol plant could start as soon as in 13 months, after Hyundai finishes its design work for the plant and related infrastructure. The company did not say how soon it will be operational.
