Methanex president Bruce Aitken told the Scotia Capital Materials Conference in Toronto today that though Methanex was continuing to close some high-cost North American plants, the corporation and its BP partner had earlier this week opened their 1.7 million tonne Titan plant in Trinidad.

This Caribbean plant, and a fourth planned to start operating in Chile next year, would help Methanex maintain its 21% stake in the growing global methanol market.

Methanex was also looking at two options in Asia-Pacific as possible sites for another large, lost-cost methanol production hub. Methanex had budgeted US$100 million for investigating the feasibility of a new plant in Asia-Pacific to underpin methanol supply to that buoyant region.

Aitken did not disclose where the preferred places where, saying it was very hard to find suitable remote locations - where gas and construction costs were not too expensive.

Argentinean gas prices for the Methanex plants in southern Chile averaged about US$1.40 per Gigajoule. Escalating capital construction costs had been the main reason behind Methanex canning its proposed methanol plant on the Burrup Peninsula, Western Australia, last year.

Current average Methanex production costs were about US$105 per tonne and the corporation hoped to halve these by 2006 by concentrating on large low-cost facilities, so it would be able to operate profitably in times of low methanol prices. Methanol prices in Asia-Pacific are currently about US$250-260 per tonne.

Methanex earlier this week announced it had secured rights for up to 40PJ of extra Maui gas to keep its Taranaki plants operating at partial capacity until at least the end of next year.

Aitken said then that Methanex was continuing to pursue opportunities to acquire additional gas to keep the New Zealand plants operating beyond 2005. New Zealand gas prices have averaged US$2.20 for Swift Energy recently and it is known Methanex can afford to pay more than that if strong world methanol market conditions continue.