RE: Persistent sellerActually, if Amerigo's power contract didn't have a price ceiling in it, they'd currently be paying somewhere around 25 cents (it's in the latest conference call). The price ceiling is 20 cents, but their one operational generator makes the average cost a bit less.
As long as the price is above 20 cents, it's actually in Amerigo's best interest that it is as high as possible. The reason is that they sell the power from their generator(s) into the grid at the market price (ie. 25 cents), but can buy it back for only 20 cents, since that's the price ceiling in their contract. The generator cost is around 18 cents, so if Chilean power prices we're to go even higher, it would actually make Amerigo's power costs lower...
It's all rather complicated, but basically I expect Amerigo's power costs won't improve materially until 2013 when the price ceiling is reset to somewhere to 8 or 9 cents.