Rio plea on power costs

utely wrong,” Mr Jacques said. “We did end up in a situation where the (electricity) price was so high it didn’t make any sense for us to produce.”

Wholesale electricity prices in Queensland have repeatedly spiked to record highs over the past couple of months despite generation capacity being available, raising concerns power plant operators may be gaming the system to inflate their profits.

“It’s not a matter of (generation) capacity, it’s a question of regulation,” Mr Jacques said.

“It’s time for the Federal Government to step in and to stop this from going on.

“At the end of the day you can’t say on one side we want to create jobs, we want to create economic benefits in Australia, and not sorting out the power prices.”

Mr Jacques made the comments on the sidelines of Rio’s general meeting in Sydney.

Rio is the latest large electricity user to warn that surging energy prices across the nation’s east coast are threatening manufacturing jobs.

Power prices of the Boyne smelter have doubled since October 2014 and Rio has not been able to secure an internationally competitive price for the 15 per cent of power it needs to supplement its longterm contract.

The Federal Government has moved to ban gas exporters from shipping out more of the energy source than they pump into the local market.