Company president and chief executive Bruce Aitken said in Vancouver last Thursday that the new gas supplies would add about 400,000 tonnes of incremental production to the Methanex global methanol supply chain in New Zealand, Chile and Trinidad.
"This agreement is subject to some final authorisation procedures, which we expect to conclude in a few weeks," Aitken said.
"In the meantime we are well advanced in preparing to restart the plant. We plan for this to occur during the third quarter and we will continue to operate our smaller Waitara Valley plant until around that time."
Aitken said the cost associated with the partial restart would be about $US55 million ($A58.9 million).
After start-up, Methanex will have one 900,000-tonne train at Motunui plus another 530,000-tonne plant at Waitara Valley operating in New Zealand.
Ongoing operation would depend on the availability of gas on "commercially acceptable terms", Aitken said.
The partial restart of the Motunui plant will effectively replace, at comparable cost, production from one of Methanex's four Chilean methanol plants, according to Aitken.
Production in Chile is constrained by having to operate only on Chilean gas, and not gas from neighbouring Argentina, as used to be the case.
Aitken said that based on the production mix of Chile, running at only about 30% of total 3.8 million-tonne capacity, and the Motunui plant start-up, the overall average price Methanex would pay under its gas contracts would be about $US1.25 ($A1.39) per million British thermal units (MMbtu).
Current gas prices in the United States and Europe exceed $US10 ($A10.71) per MMbtu.
While Methanex has not disclosed the source of this new gas, industry sources have told PetroleumNews.net that the gas is Maui right of first refusal (ROFR) gas.
Contact Energy and Vector subsidiary NGC are entitled to 275 petajoules of Maui ROFR gas through to 2014, with Contact having the rights to 61.63% and NGC the rest.
However, both can on-sell ROFR gas that is surplus to their requirements and high world methanol prices, currently about $US450 ($A482) per tonne in the Asia-Pacific region, are enabling Methanex to pay market-priced ROFR gas (about $NZ6.00-6.50 per gigajoule) and run its New Zealand plants profitably.
