The
San Juan Basin, located in northwestern New Mexico and southwestern
Colorado, produces natural gas from oil, gas, and coalseam wells.
Because of abundant natural gas supply and price discounts relative
to other natural gas trading hubs, the San Juan Basin is an attractive
location to establish greenfield manufacturing of value-added chemicals
from locally produced natural gas. To assess the viability of manufacturing
different types of chemicals, agent-based models of three chemical
markets were created to simulate historical market operation in the
United States. Using the agent-based models, potential market share
of a greenfield plant in the San Juan Basin is estimated. The historical
market models show that world-scale production of urea or polypropylene
could be achieved by a manufacturing plant in the San Juan Basin.
Production of propylene in the region likely could not sustain world-scale
production, even with improvements in local transportation infrastructure
connections.