Rick Wilkinson
OGJ Correspondent
MELBOURNE, Oct. 9 -- Methanex New Zealand has restarted one of the two methanol trains at its large Motunui complex near New Plymouth in the country's North Island following a $55 million recommissioning program.
Full production of 900,000 tonnes/year is expected by the end of the month. The plant will use 34 petajoules/year of natural gas feedstock.
The two-train, 1.8 million tonne/year Motunui plant was mothballed in December 2004 because of the unavailability of competitively priced gas from offshore Maui field.
However, New Zealand now has a slight oversupply of gas from the near-shore Pohokura gas-condensate field recently placed on stream, more market-priced Maui 'right of first refusal' gas becoming available, and some supply from onshore fields.
In addition, Kupe field off Taranaki is due on stream in mid-2009. That means the oversupply situation may continue until 2014 at current consumption rates.
Methanol prices in the Asia-Pacific region are currently at around $450/tonne so Methanol New Zealand can afford to pay a market price of around $6-6.5 (NZ)/gigajoule for its plant to run profitably.