Affiliates of OCI Global NV, Amsterdam, and NuStar Energy LP, San Antonio, Texas, have entered into an agreement for OCI to transport ammonia on a new segment of NuStar Pipeline Operating Partnership LP’s ammonia pipeline system, OCI Global said on May 2.
Under the arrangement, NuStar will install a new 14-mile pipeline segment that will connect OCI Nitrogen’s Iowa Fertilizer Co. (IFCo) facility in Wever, Iowa, with NuStar’s existing 2,000-mile anhydrous ammonia pipeline, which originates in Louisiana and flows northbound to various points in the Midwest, including Iowa.
The IFCo Wever plant uses ammonia to manufacture urea and UAN and to produce Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF).
The agreement has been executed by both companies and commits NuStar to provide transportation services under a long-term arrangement, OCI said.
To facilitate the project, OCI has committed $30 million in capital expenditures for new ammonia cooling and storage infrastructure, which, it said, would allow it to “economically” transport ammonia from the US Gulf Coast and capitalize on its existing storage capacity.
OCI is expecting to bring an additional 1.1 million mt/y of blue ammonia capacity online in 2025 in the Gulf Coast. OCI broke ground on a new blue ammonia production facility in Beaumont, Texas, last December (GM Dec. 9, 2022).
NuStar expects the new section of pipeline to be operational in 2024.
At the launch of the IFCo plant in April 2017, the facility had production capacities of 2,200 mt/d for ammonia, 420,000 mt/y for urea, and 1.5 million mt/y of UAN, as well as production capacity for DEF (GM April 21, 2017; Nov. 23, 2016).
OCI NV and Fertiglobe CEO Ahmed El-Hoshy told analysts at an OCI earnings call in February that the company now has achieved over 1 million mt/y of DEF capacity at the IFCo plant, and could potentially go to 1.3 million mt/y (GM Feb. 17, p. 22). The nameplate capacity for DEF was approximately 315,000 mt/y when OCI brought the plant online in 2017.