RE: Any change for a smelter?"Trying to send me on a wild goose chase?"
No no, on the contrary. I try to look the deal from the smelter point of view.
Incentives to smelter are:
- guaranteed concentrate supply
- jointly build power plant (both smelter and mine benefit from economics of scale)
- "free" coal transportation, by returning trucks.
- I suppose not all the thermal energy need to be converted to electricity for smelting purposes. So coal smelter opex would not fully reflect the cost difference of coal and hydro power.
But when the competing alternative would be to build smelter on hydro power:
- SWN had to pay the smelter opex difference between coal and hydro, less the above mentioned perks for the smelter.
So, if anyone can find how much power SWN size smelter needs, or what is the opex difference of coal powered and hydro powered smelter... AJ/Joe/Frozenice/anyone, I'm little limited with time currently, so help appreciated.