"Delaying plant cost $100M’

Press, 10 November 1981, Page 40

"Delaying plant cost $100M’

PA New Plymouth The cost of bailing out of the proposed Motunui synthetic petrol plant will have reached $lOO million by election day, said the Minister of Energy (Mr Birch) in New Plymouth. Under the financing arrangement for the project, s’>s million of this would be Ntw Zealand taxpayers’ moiey with the other $25 milion coming from the Mob} Corporation, Mr Birch said. Mr Birch, who was opening tie National Party’s campaign in the New Plymouth electorate, concentrated lis address before about 60 people almost exclusively on National’s growth strategy and the role of energy ievelopments in the strategy. He said hedid not blame Mobil for no, signing the synthetic petrel plant contract at this He described camments by Labour Party spokesmen that the synthetic petrol plant would be cancelled, reviewed, or hitched to the nearby (Petralgas) Methanol plant as a graphic example

of Labour’s misunderstanding of New Zealand’s energy needs. He said the Social Credit leader, Mr Bruce Beetham, was the “Alice in Wonderland” unless he began thinking big. “All the projects we have been involved with are attractive from an economic point of view.” If imported oil prices continued to rise, and Mr Birch said he believed they could go up by 3 per cent a year, then net savings from the plant could be $BOO million. Mr Birch made it clear the delay in signing the plant contract would not delay the project itself unless National lost the election. The project had been kept going because each month’s delay cost an extra $5 million to $lO million in wages and meant an additional $lO million cost through inflation and $2O million in lost foreign exchange earnings. Work had been going on for two years and in view of the costs of delays, it had been decided it would not stop because an election was to be held.