Canatxx, a privately held American energy company founded in 1988, specialized in natural gas infrastructure and private power generation amid deregulated markets. Headquartered in Houston, the firm assembled experts in gas compression, pipelines, and salt cavern storage to pursue ambitious LNG projects. Its most notable endeavor centered on the Amlwch site in Anglesey, Wales, transforming a former chemical plant into a proposed LNG import terminal
In the mid-2000s, Canatxx purchased the dormant Great Lakes site at Amlwch Port, a bromine extraction plant operational since 1950 under Associated Octel. The location offered deep-water access for LNG tankers, proximity to the Irish Sea, and industrial infrastructure including rail sidings from the Anglesey Central Line. Texas-based Canatxx Energy Ventures announced plans to import liquefied natural gas, regasify it onshore, and pipe it 70 miles undersea to a storage facility at Preesall, Lancashire. This acquisition promised around 100 jobs for the Anglesey community, revitalizing a region hit by industrial decline
Canatxx proposed an LNG import and regasification terminal at the former Octel Bromine Works site north of Amlwch Port, Anglesey, between 2007 and 2009. The project aimed to address growing UK natural gas demand by importing LNG from tankers, converting it to gas onshore, and piping it to salt cavern storage at Preesall, Lancashire. Planning applications were submitted around 2007, with approval granted in March 2008 amid Europe’s gas supply concerns.
The terminal would occupy the 100-acre ex-Great Lakes Chemical (Octel) industrial footprint, featuring deep-water access via Amlwch Port. Key elements included a regasification plant onshore, with LNG offloaded at a single point mooring (SPM) 3 kilometers offshore to accommodate large tankers up to 210,000 cubic meters. Flexible risers and pipelines would shuttle LNG to shore, where open-rack vaporizers heated by seawater would regasify it before compression and dispatch via a 70-mile subsea pipeline to Fleetwood.
The Canatxx LNG terminal project at Amlwch relied heavily on integration with a proposed salt cavern gas storage facility at Preesall near Fleetwood, Lancashire, but geological and regulatory issues with the caverns contributed significantly to its failure. Preesall’s salt formations faced challenges like thin halite layers, mudstone interbeds, and structural complexities that raised doubts about stable cavern development for large-scale, rapid-cycling storage. These problems cascaded into financing shortfalls and project abandonment by the early 2010s.
Canatxx UK LP remains registered with Companies House, but the Amlwch site lingers abandoned, explored by urban adventurers.
In 2026 a new proposal was suggested.
Carbon3.ai has proposed redeveloping the former Octel Bromine Works site at Amlwch Port, Anglesey, into a modern AI data center and computing facility. The 61-acre brownfield site, abandoned since 2004, was acquired freehold by the company in November 2025, aligning with the UK Government’s designation of North Wales as a national AI Growth Zone. This venture aims to create secure, sovereign AI infrastructure powered by renewables, leveraging the site’s industrial zoning and Freeport tax incentives.
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