TT
Yara mulls new investment
By
Sandra
Chouthi
Trinidad Guardian
Port
Spain
Petroleumworldtrinidad.com
05 21 06
With
ammonia prices fetching US$300 a tonne on the world
market, business nowadays is good for Yara Trinidad
Ltd, said its president Mark Loquan.
Loquan
said US$300 is a good price in today’s commodities
market, given that at one point it was US$90 a tonne.
“That’s
mainly because of what you see happening in the
US. You have high natural gas prices that will probably
remain for the medium term due to the fact that
the energy consumption in the US, in terms of the
supply/demand balance, there is a tightness of supply,”
Loquan said.
“The
amount they have been finding in the gas reservoirs
they have been drilling is less and less. So, basically,
you are on a treadmill trying to keep up,”
he said.
“In
terms of the US compared to Trinidad, we have a
fair amount of acreage in terms of yet-to-be explored
areas for gas.”
He
said the current areas that we are using in finding
gas now is still relatively small compared to the
entire area which can be potentially drilled.
Loquan
was speaking earlier this month at a function held
by the UWI Faculty of Engineering’s advisory
council, which met to observe the faculty’s
45th anniversary.
He
said that Yara produces about 1.3 million tonnes
of ammonia a year. Most of the company’s T&T
production is exported to the United States market
where it is used in solid fertiliser, mainly diammonia
phosphate, which is a lot easier to handle compared
to liquid ammonia.
While
international prices for ammonia are currently high,
Loquan said Yara’s facilities at the Point
Lisas industrial estate in Couva include the old
Fedchem plant—which has been there since 1959—and
the company needs to look at expansion/modernisation
plans to remain competitive.
“The
most I can say now, given that we are in a feasibility
study, is that we’re at the phase where we
determine the size and shape of the project, determine
what you are getting into, how much, how many tonnes.
Basically, the most I can say is that it will be
ammonia and downstream,” Loquan said.
“It
will increase production and be more competitive
than say what we are running now where we have plants
as far back as 1966, 1977. Compared to modern technology,
the amount of energy you use to make one tonne could
be 40-50 per cent higher than what a new plant will
use.”
Yara
was previously known as Hydro Agri Trinidad Ltd.
The change of name from Hydro Agri to Yara followed
the demerger from the Norwegian industrial group
Norsk Hydro ASA.
Former
prime minister Basdeo Panday and Norsk Hydro president
Eivind Reiten had in 1998 signed an agreement to
build a US$1.5 billion aluminium plant. Norsk Hydro
put this project on hold in 1999.
Asked
if Norsk Hydro was still interested in setting up
an aluminium smelter plant in Trinidad, Loquan said,
“I’m not aware of where that is. I believe
it was found to be uneconomical. But then again,
I’m not involved in the aluminium business.”
Alcoa
is proposing to build a US$1.5 billion, 341,000
tonne aluminium smelter in Cap-de-ville, in south
west Trinidad, while a joint venture of Venezuelan
company Sural and state-owned National Energy Corporation
proposes to invest up to US$700 million in a smaller
smelter at Union estate in La Brea.
—Sandra
Chouthi
Thursday
18th May 2006
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2005 Trinidad Guardian.
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