“The key question with Kenai is, is there enough gas to restart the plant … If we were able to bring that plant up, that will be by far the best capacity expansion we’ve ever done.”

Chuck Magro, Agrium’s new CEO, talked about the potential expansion at Borger, Texas, and restart at Kenai, Alaska, during the discussion that followed his presentation at CIBC’s 17th Annual Whistler Institutional Investor Conference on Wednesday, January 22nd.

You can read the full transcript here, or download his presentation to investors here (links to the PDF and also audio version).

On Kenai, Alaska:

“There is some significant drilling going on now on the Cook Inlet and they’re finding gas but there is not enough gas for us to restart our plant now … And you can only drill in the summer times. So we really need another drilling season and we won’t have those answers until … probably late in 2014.

“We did make some very wise decisions when we shut it down and we have preserved the plant … It will require capital to restart … rough numbers, it’s about 1 million tons, slightly over 1 million tons of ammonia, urea capacity and the capital numbers which are [nowhere near finalized], we think it could take $200 million, maybe $250 million to restart. So if you look at those economics, they are phenomenal and they are worth a year’s worth of investigation to see if it’s even possible.”

And on Borger, Texas:

“We do have a project that we will take to our board in the first quarter, an expansion for Borger, Texas, that will be a urea capacity expansion that looks really good right now.”

You can read the full transcript at Seeking Alpha.