Those of you who have been paying attention will recall that all you need to make nitrogen fertilizer is a supply of natural gas, some fresh air and a lot of capital. When you get your plant up and running it will kick out anhydrous ammonia and likely urea because there are some natural synergies to the urea production process. If you want to go one step further you will add an ammonium nitrate line and then you will bring the urea and nitrate together to make UAN or liquid nitrogen.
That’s a gross over simplification of the process but the point is that UAN (28-0-0) is the final stage of nitrogen production. Its arguably more convenient to use and it has the most processing cost per unit of N which explains why historically it is also the highest cost product per unit of N.
But not right now. Since about this time last year the prices of urea and UAN have been inverted in NOLA.
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