"Yes the renewal of our gas contract in Australia is good news for us. We have undertaken a thorough review of all alternatives in Australia and now have a definitive path forward," the Asia-Pacific senior vice-president told EnergyReview.Net from Canada today.

"We will be presenting the project to our board at the end of July and are confident that we now have the optimum balance between scale, which improves the economics, and the total financial commitment."

He said, given board approval, Methanex planned to begin site works during the last quarter of this year on a $US500 million plant at the peninsula.

In April Methanex announced foreign exchange blowouts had caused the corporation to put a hold on the proposed $A2 billion greenfields project at the Burrup Peninsula. It said the capital cost of the proposed two-million tonne development had become disproportionately high.

It said it would be studying alternatives for long-term methanol supply to its Asia-Pacific customers, including installing capacity at Burrup in smaller increments that would be more manageable from a cost perspective.

However, yesterday Woodside breathed fresh life into the Methanex plans for Western Australia, by agreeing to terms of a new gas supply agreement, which calls for only half the original volume of gas required. Woodside is to now supply 100 terajoules of North West Shelf gas a day for 20 years, instead of the original 200 terajoules a day for 25 years.

Aitken last month told EnergyReview.Net that he hoped to soon have good news on both sides of the Tasman. However, today he said making progress with any fresh gas supply contracts for the almost idling Taranaki methanol plants was just plain hard yakka.

"Sadly no good news in New Zealand at the moment, making any progress is hard."