Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley is de­mand­ing that gov­ern­ment "give a full ex­pla­na­tion" why it has de­cid­ed to move the con­struc­tion of a methanol to petro­chem­i­cals com­plex and a methanol of olefins project from the La Brea In­dus­tri­al Es­tate to Point Lisas. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, at the Hy­att Re­gency, the Op­po­si­tion leader in­sist­ed that the move was con­trary to the de­vel­op­men­tal plans of the coun­try and that it was not dis­sim­i­lar to an ap­proach adopt­ed by the last UNC gov­ern­ment to the peo­ple of La Brea. Dr Row­ley said: "The PNM is very dis­ap­point­ed that the Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed not to place the plants at La Brea, which has been de­vel­oped at great cost to the tax­pay­ers for the very rea­son these plants are be­ing con­struct­ed.

"The Gov­ern­ment promised that they would find plants for La Brea af­ter their de­ci­sion to pull the smelter and we are very dis­ap­point­ed that they have moved them to Point Lisas." The Guardian on Mon­day re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that gov­ern­ment had qui­et­ly de­cid­ed to move the plants. The in­creas­ing­ly con­tro­ver­sial projects are yet to have fi­nal ap­proval from the Cab­i­net fol­low­ing ma­jor is­sues raised by some mem­bers of the Cab­i­net over the price of nat­ur­al gas be­ing of­fered to the Sau­di Ara­bi­an state-owned com­pa­ny Sau­di Ba­sic In­dus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion (SABIC). The pro­pos­al by SABIC to build a methanol-to-petro­chem­i­cals com­plex and a methanol-to-olefins plant will use more an a quar­ter bil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day. If ap­proved, the plant will be con­struct­ed at a time when there is a short­age of nat­ur­al gas and when plants on the Point Lisas es­tate are op­er­at­ing at a 30 per cent cur­tail­ment.

Dr Row­ley ar­gued that any sug­ges­tion that the project was too large for La Brea was a farce since Point Lisas was full. He said it was a clear plan of the coun­try to move plants to oth­er ar­eas of the coun­try so that some of the eco­nom­ic hard­ships the peo­ple of La Brea and oth­er sim­i­lar com­mu­ni­ties are fac­ing can be ad­dressed. He al­so took of­fence to the pref­er­en­tial gas pric­ing arrange­ments which, he said, if of­fered to SABIC at Point Lisas will open the door to oth­er users de­mand­ing low­er prices. "We have seen this hap­pen be­fore with the UNC, re­mem­ber Farm­land Miss­chem when they of­fered the com­pa­ny the same green­field terms even though they had moved it from La Brea to Point Lisas? That led to oth­ers de­mand­ing the same prices and the coun­try took a hit twice." Row­ley said. The SABIC project does not in­clude the con­struc­tion of an acetic acid plant con­sid­ered a key part in the strat­e­gy to make the coun­try en­ter in­to the man­u­fac­ture of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. Acetic acid or ethanoic acid is one of the world's most im­por­tant chem­i­cals and is used in a va­ri­ety of prod­ucts: tex­tiles, food pro­cess­ing and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. It is com­mon­ly known as vine­ga and is an im­por­tant chem­i­cal used to pro­duce down­stream prod­ucts.