Methanol plant to close, jobs to be lost, day may be saved

Methanex may be closing, but the Matua announces a whole new raft of possibilities

News that Methanex will idle its New Zealand operations from early 2027, due to just three nangs of natural gas left in the Maui field, may have alarmed many in the industry but Resources Minister Shane Jones remains buoyant.

“The Matua maintains a confident demeanour,” he may have told WWNews. “The Universe has always provided and will continue to provide. We just have to find the means to exploit it all, in ways that ensure a healthy profit for those backing the means-seekers.”

While the Minister’s second favourite* option of universal exploitation – an LNG tank farm sited in a residential New Plymouth street – remains on the cards until after the election, he now favours a bold new initiative thought up over dinner just last week in a private London dining establishment.

“When one door closes, the Matua opens a coal seam,” he said. “We have huge coal reserves, a long and respectable tradition of running gasworks and lots of vacant land, especially in downtown Wellington. So if we can’t drill for natural gas we can just make it, using natural coal.”

Perhaps anticipating criticism from Greens and anyone else with half a clue, Mr Jones asserted the plan is not taking New Zealand back to the dark ages. “We’re definitely not going backwards,” he said. “We’re going sideways, into the 1950s, which coincidentally is also when my energy policy was written.”

Thanks to the Government’s fast-trackery system, coal mines have already been opened, and the finishing touches are being made on the first of thirty coke furnaces planned for Courtenay Place.

Artist’s impression of new facility’s seamless integration into the Golden Mile

Staffing isn’t likely to be an issue. “As everyone knows, I have personally rescued scores of slave labourers from the evil kiwifruit industry in the last few days,” the Minister said. “These are people crying out for a change of pace, so we’ll sit them down with a video of How Green Was My Valley and a copy of Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier and they can hit the ground running.”

The Matua expects the first New Gas to start flowing by Wednesday of next week, with Government Inquiries into town-levelling explosions and mystery clusters of occupational diseases beginning in the new year.

*The Matua’s first preference for dry-year energy back-up was an expansion of New Zealand’s geothermal power generation, although he did accept that siting new production facilities closer to Auckland’s City Rail Link would be problematical.