petroleumworld

T&T in talks with Brazilian company on aluminum project

SANTIAGO
Trinidad & Tobago Guardian
Petroleumworldtt.com 10 14 09

The government of T&T is in talks with a Brazilian company to build an aluminum smelter on the island, the country’s energy minister said. The company seeks to build a smelter capable of producing 125,000 metric tons a year of the metal, Energy Industry Minister Conrad Enill said Wednesday in an interview in Buenos Aires. He declined to the name the Brazilian company.

“We are still in discussions with the Brazilian partner who has requested that we go ahead with it and we would make an investment decision by the second quarter of next year,” Conrad said on the sidelines of the World Gas Conference. T&T is seeking to attract energy-intensive industries such as aluminum makers interested in its abundant natural gas reserves. Alcoa Inc, the largest US aluminum producer, was interested in building an aluminum smelter in the Caribbean nation in 2006 before the project met environmental opposition.

Aluminum slumped 35 per cent in the third quarter from a year ago after London Metal Exchange-monitored warehouses inventories more than trebled. Aluminum is used in airplane parts, automobiles and beverage cans. Enill said lower prices won’t prevent the government from pursuing the smelter. Alcoa currently uses a deep-water port on the island to unload bauxite from mines in nearby Suriname to be distributed to its alumina refineries in Canada, Norway and the US. Bauxite is the raw ingredient that is refined to make alumina, the intermediary product needed to produce aluminum. (Bloomberg)

Story from Bloomberg

Bloomberg
October 10th 2009

Copyright© 2008 respective author or news agency. All rights reserved.
We welcome the use of Petroleumworld™ stories by anyone provided it mentions Petroleumworld.com as the source. Other stories you have to get authorization by its authors.

Your feedback is important to us!

We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.