McCook vows to reopen next April
By M.L. Madison The Daily News
Longview Aluminum will reopen next year, despite the Bonneville Power Administration's request that Northwest smelters remain closed until 2003 to conserve power.
Monday's plea for industrial conservation came with a hefty price tag: if industrial customers don't conserve and lessen demand for unregulated energy, wholesale power prices may soar 250 percent this fall.
"We feel like we've already made incredible sacrifices," said Paul Frank, spokesman for McCook Metals, which owns the plant. "The BPA understands our needs, and we will reopen in April. We need to make aluminum; that's what we bought the plant for."
The smelter was shut down this spring to sell power back to BPA for $225 million. McCook will begin buying 100 megawatts of power from BPA -- about a quarter of what it takes to run the plant -- in April 2002, when some of the plant's 925 workers will be rehired.
BPA spokesman Mike Hansen agreed that McCook "has been very cooperative" in the agency's scramble to reduce energy use, both by shutting down in the short term and agreeing to stop buying power from BPA by 2006.
"We do think they have gone a long way in helping the Northwest out," Hansen said. "However, we are still looking under every rock that we can to help find ways to take load off the system and will continue to work with other smelters to have them stay down for two years."
McCook plans to build its own cogeneration on-site at the plant by 2003, as well as making the plant more energy efficient.
Low aluminum prices and skyrocketing power rates have left a cloud hanging over the industry's future. Most of the region's smelters have shut down, either to sell power on the lucrative open market or back to BPA.
McCook believes it can run the plant profitably enough to make aluminum. Frank said the company hopes to increase production as 2002 wears on.
But it's safe to say steelworkers at the plant aren't counting on it.
"Hopefully, it's true that they can get enough power to make aluminum here at a price they can make a profit on," said Ted Trople, secretary-treasurer of the Longview Federated Aluminum Council, which represents steelworkers at the plant. "But with the weather conditions this fall, and the price of wholesale power and what BPA's rates are going to have to be, I don't think it's going to be possible to produce aluminum profitably."