Industrial natural gas consumption growth continues rising Providing another sign of continued growth in industrial demand for natural gas, two European companies announced earlier this month that they would form a joint venture to build an ammonia plant on the Gulf Coast. BASF, a German chemicals company, and Yara, a Norwegian agricultural company, plan to build the plant on an existing BASF site in Freeport, Texas. The plant would have a capacity to produce 750,000 metric tons of ammonia per year and could use up to 77 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natural gas as a feedstock. BASF and Yara announced in October that they were planning an ammonia plant, and cited relatively low natural gas prices over the past several years as a reason for locating the plant in the United States. After industrial natural gas consumption bottomed out in 2009 at 16.9 Bcf/d, it has […]