TACOMA — A proposal to build the world’s largest methanol plant at the Port of Tacoma has been canceled.
Northwest Innovation Works, the China-backed company that had proposed the $3.4 billion facility on the waterfront site, announced Tuesday that the project was canceled.
Vee Godley, president of Northwest Innovation Works, said regulatory uncertainty was the reason for the cancellation.
“Right now, we no longer have a project in Tacoma,” Godley said.
He said the company decided to withdraw the Tacoma methanol project because ambiguity in the governmental review process had clouded the project’s viability.
The company would need at least three more years to complete environmental review, he said, and it realized that building on a remediated site such as the one that had been proposed is a complex process.
“At the end of the day, to get where we need to be, we’d look at an investment of $30 million to $40 million to get through the environmental review process,” Godley said.
The port announced the project in May 2014 with statements of support from local and state officials, but has since elicited an outpouring of public opposition. The protests had no effect on the decision, Godley said.
“Wherever you are siting a project like this, there’s controversy,” Godley said. “We support a process that gives voice to local citizens.”
Northwest Innovation Works, which began as a collaboration between China’s government and the petroleum company BP, had planned three gas-to-methanol plants for the Pacific Northwest. The plants were proposed to draw from the region’s main gas pipeline to create methanol to ship to China for use in making plastics.
The company’s proposals to build smaller plants in Kalama and near Clatskanie, Ore., are still alive, Godley said. The Oregon project has been held up by a land dispute, but the Kalama site’s environmental review finished its comment period this month.
The company will make its final payment of $1.464 million to the Port of Tacoma on April 29, Godley said.
The special Port of Tacoma commission meeting scheduled for Monday is canceled, according to a port press release.
“We’re disappointed. We thought that this project offered a lot of opportunity for great jobs with high wages,” said Bruce Kendall, president and CEO at the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County.
“Now the question turns to what’s the best use of that property,” Kendall said. “An industrial site, with rail access and all the utilities — it’s an amazingly important piece of property for long-term industrial use. Now we go and look for the next opportunity.
“I look forward to marketing it,” he said. “The value of the property is still there. In Puget Sound, this growing area, there’s very little industrial property. I would hazard a guess that there are very few if any industrial properties on deep water that are the size of this property and ready to go to market. That is a wonderful asset to have in one’s community.
“We have an important community conversation to have about the value of industrial investment and industrial jobs,” he said. “That’s an important dialogue for the community to have. We need to have that dialogue more deeply and more often.”
