The methanol supply constraint in the US will add to the price momentum that we are seeing today, in part helped by the higher natural gas price. Despite the higher US natural gas price and the much weaker Asia price, there is still enough margin in US exports to Asia to justify the trade, although US producers would see meaningfully lower margins from these sales. However, to keep the US market balanced, pushing any surpluses offshore makes more sense than pushing into the domestic market and risking price declines. Much as in the polymer markets, US domestic sellers have quite a bit of pricing protection because of the high costs of getting any competing material into the US. See more on Methanol in today's daily report.
