CFAC hopeful for long-term BPA deal

The Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. will continue to operate through October while it tries to hammer out a longer term deal for power with the Bonneville Power Administration.

The BPA has allowed the plant to purchase power on the open market, CFAC external affairs manager Haley Beaudry said. The move keeps close to 90 workers on the job.

The current power deal with BPA runs through the end of September.

BPA posted a draft contract with CFAC on its Web site earlier this month. That contract calls for selling 140 megawatts of power to the company at the industrial rate of about $34 a megawatt hour — provided CFAC maintains certain employment levels from 2010 through 2011.

The contract mirrors a deal BPA is negotiating with Alcoa. Alcoa and CFAC are the only two remaining aluminum producers in the Northwest U.S.

But Beaudry said that contract was not the deal the company was working on with BPA — it was just that BPA, by law, had to publicly post some sort of contract.

BPA spokeswoman Katie Pruder confirmed the Administration was continuing efforts to reach a deal with CFAC.

"We're still working to come up with a solution," she said.

Whether or not BPA could even sell power to aluminum companies was in doubt earlier this year, as several utilities in the Pacific Northwest challenged how the BPA sold power to them.

The courts, however, ruled that BPA could sell aluminum companies power, it just couldn't over-subsidize the rates it charged.

Beaudry said he was optimistic a deal could be struck, noting Montana's lawmakers have been helpful.

"We have excellent assistance and relations and assistance from the Montana delegation," he said.

The aluminum markets aren't very good, however. Aluminum is trading at about 84 cents a pound and there's about 4.5 million metric tons in worldwide inventory, Beaudry noted.