Methanex New Zealand is also taking on more permanent staff and fewer part-time or temporary contractors.
The company is currently advertising for staff to fill three full-time IT positions and offering a four-year control systems apprenticeship.
As well, it wants temporary project staff for an “overall plant turnaround” scheduled to start in October. Methanex currently employs about 100 people in Taranaki.
Methanex NZ managing director Harvey Weake told PetroleumNews.net that the company’s confidence in New Zealand’s gas supplies was much higher than it had been two years ago and the company would not be advertising for permanent staff if it were thinking of closing the valley plant in the near future.
“Our optimism has grown over time and on the back of increasing levels of exploration,” he said.
But he declined to be drawn further on the medium-to-long term prospects for Methanex in New Zealand.
The last maintenance shutdown at the valley cost about $NZ10 million ($A8.9 million) and then Asia-Pacific vice-president Bruce Aitken feared that might be the end of the operation, given New Zealand’s then grim gas outlook.
However, Weake said the October turnaround would not be as expensive as that of November 2002: while catalysts would have to be replaced and some remedial work would be needed, no de-bottlenecking would be done.
“It will take about a month and give us our warrant of fitness, so to speak, for another five years,” he said.
Methanex mothballed the 1.8 million tonne capacity Motunui complex in late 2004, primarily due to the unavailability of enough competitively priced Maui gas.
It then shut the smaller (520,000t capacity) nearby valley plant but reopened it in early 2006 as a swing producer, buoyed by better domestic gas supplies and continuing high world methanol prices.
Contract Asia-Pacific methanol prices are currently about $US320 per tonne.
In January, Weake said Methanex was aiming to keep the valley plant operating at full capacity throughout 2007, using gas from multiple sources.
Today he said he hoped to renew those short-term gas contracts or secure others to enable the valley plant to continue operating into 2008 and possibly beyond that date.
“The flexible arrangement has served us and New Zealand well,” Weake said. “We are quite optimistic we will be able to continue ongoing flexible operations with the valley plant.”
Weake said there was presently no intent to restart even one of the two Motunui trains, though there was still some flexibility in response to a “decent-sized gas find” that would change the gas market in New Zealand.
Last month, Contact Energy chief executive David Baldwin told a Macquarie Investor Conference in Sydney that there was enough gas in New Zealand to keep Methanex’s valley plant operating until at least 2010, though increasing gas prices and decreasing field production flexibility might see the methanol manufacturer exit New Zealand early next decade.
