KEY POINTS:
Canadian company Methanex is to keep its Taranaki plant operating until the end of March.
Methanex, of Vancouver, announced the move today, saying it had secured the additional natural gas supply needed to keep the 530,000-tonne a year plant operating until then.
Numerous planned and unplanned supply outages in the past several months meant global inventories of methanol were extremely low, the company said.
Operating the New Zealand plant would offset some of the supply shortages.
The Waitara Valley plant was shut down for the last quarter of 2005.
It was reopened this year, when Methanex said it secured enough natural gas feedstock in New Zealand to produce methanol until the end of the 2006 second quarter.
- NZPA
