Sunoco Inc. announced April 28 that Gateway Energy and Coke Company, its indirect wholly owned subsidiary and an affiliate of SunCoke Energy Inc., will build a heat-recovery coke manufacturing facility contiguous to U.S. Steel’s steelmaking facility in Granite City, Ill. A long-term contract to supply metallurgical-grade coke and steam to U.S. Steel has been executed.
The new coke facility will include 120 heat-recovery ovens capable of producing approximately 650,000 tons of screened blast furnace coke per year which will be sold to U.S. Steel under a 15-year contract. The coke facility will also supply steam to a new cogeneration plant that will be built, owned and operated by U.S. Steel.
Construction of the coke facility is expected to begin May 5 and take approximately 18 months.
“This agreement demonstrates continued progress in the growth of our SunCoke Energy business,” said John G. Drosdick, chairman and chief executive officer of Sunoco. “With the construction of this facility in Granite City, the expected completion of our second Haverhill, Ohio, plant later this year, and the expected construction of another facility in Middletown, Ohio, we will bring the total number of coke facilities we operate to seven and increase production capacity from 4.3 million tons per year to more than 6 million tons per year.”
The cokemaking facility will cost approximately $290 million to build, excluding capitalized interest. It will result in hundreds of temporary construction jobs and about 70 permanent operating and maintenance jobs.
SunCoke Energy’s cokemaking process uses a proprietary low-cost cokemaking technology that is environmentally superior to the chemical by-product recovery technology currently used by most other coke producers. This process is specifically referenced in the U.S. Clean Air Act as the “maximum achievable control technology” for coke production.
SunCoke Energy, through other project companies, currently operates metallurgical coke plants in Vansant, Va.; East Chicago, Ind.; Haverhill, Ohio; and Vitória, Brazil. These facilities produce more than 4.2 million tons of coke each year. SunCoke Energy is currently building a second 550,000 tons-per-year cokemaking facility and associated cogeneration power plant at its Haverhill site which are expected to start production in the second half of 2008. SunCoke Energy has also announced plans to build a 550,000 tons-per-year coke facility and cogeneration plant in Middletown, Ohio. Construction of the Middletown facility is contingent upon receipt of all necessary permits, as well as available economic incentives.
Sunoco, Inc., headquartered in Philadelphia, is a leading manufacturer and marketer of petroleum and petrochemical products. With 910,000 barrels per day of refining capacity, nearly 4,700 retail sites selling gasoline and convenience items, approximately 5,500 miles of crude oil and refined product owned and operated pipelines and 38 product terminals, Sunoco is one of the largest independent refiner-marketers in the United States. Sunoco is a significant manufacturer of petrochemicals with annual sales of approximately five billion pounds, largely chemical intermediates used to make fibers, plastics, film and resins. Using a unique, patented technology, Sunoco's cokemaking facilities in the United States have the capacity to manufacture over 2.5 million tons annually of high-quality metallurgical-grade coke for use in the steel industry. Sunoco also is the operator of, and has an equity interest in, a 1.7 million tons-per-year cokemaking facility in Vitória, Brazil.
