Copper market’s biggest whale fuels speculation of a major shift
The world’s single biggest buyer of copper, State Grid Corp. of China, has slowed its purchases of copper wire this year.
Alcoa Corp said on Thursday it reverted to using gas to fuel boilers at its partially owned Kwinana and Pinjarra alumina refineries in Western Australia, a week after the aluminum producer had resorted to using diesel due to gas shortage.
Gas supply shortage in Western Australia has forced Alcoa to flag a 30% cut in its production from its Kwinana refinery, which it jointly owns with Alumina Ltd.
“Kwinana refinery continues to operate with one production unit offline and reduced process flows,” Alcoa said. However, Alcoa did not set out a timeline on when it will resume full production.
Chevron Corp on Wednesday re-commenced gas supply from Wheatstone domestic gas plant to the Western Australia market after an equipment failure knocked off the energy firm’s 215 terajoules-a-day Wheatstone plant on Jan. 5.
The Wheatstone outage came on top of a supply loss from Santos Ltd’s Varanus Island operation, which has been shut since late-November due to a leak on a gas pipeline from an offshore platform.
Despite increased gas supply into the Western Australian domestic gas market, Santos continued to experience production constraints at two gas facilities, Alcoa said.
(By Tejaswi Marthi; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
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