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News from Trinidad & Tobago as of
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Trinidad in talks with Brazilian company on aluminum project
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| Published on Friday, October 9, 2009 | Email To Friend Print Version
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By Matt Craze
SANTIAGO, Brazil (Bloomberg) -- The government of Trinidad & Tobago 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.
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Trinidad and Tobago's Energy Minister,
Conrad Enill. AFP PHOTO |
“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.
Trinidad 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 percent 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. | | | | Reads : 682 | | | |
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