Methanex run two methanol plants in that region and Aitken earlier this week at the New Zealand Crown Minerals Petroleum Conference rubbished the perception that gas supplied from the Maui gas fields was cheap.
“Cheap Maui gas was a myth”, he said in response to Shell International executive Tim Warren who had said “the days of Methanex getting cheap Maui gas were numbered.”
Speaking at the GTL conference in Perth he said the price of NWS gas was comparative to that from Maui.
“Give or take 10-20% either way,” he said, “they’re not far off each other. Both NWS and Maui gas are cheap in comparison to Northern American gas or Chile, but compared to each other, there’s not much in it.”
Aitken said later in an address to the conference that due to the price of gas in the US, he foresaw the closure of all their onshore US operations within a few years, a process already started, and one which previously numbered over a dozen refineries of small to mid size capacity.
