The Middle East crisis is straining global supplies of aluminum — a metal that’s key to making everything from fighter jets and soda cans to clean-energy technologies like solar panels and electric vehicles. Iran’s strikes on two Gulf aluminum smelters and the monthslong blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted production and pushed up prices, fueling fears of a coming aluminum crisis.

The United States has plans for a massive new smelter that would help to somewhat insulate the country from future global disruptions. But how quickly the $4 billion facility moves ahead depends largely on when it secures a long-term power contract — something its developers have been trying to do for almost a year.

In May 2025, Emirates Global Aluminium announced that it was building a new smelter in Oklahoma, a state with abundant natural gas and wind and solar energy resources. Earlier this year, Chicago-based Century Aluminum said it was partnering with EGA to build the plant, slated to produce up to 750,000 metric tons annually, through a joint venture named Oklahoma Primary Aluminum.

The energy-hungry facility will be America’s first new smelter since 1980, and it will more than double the nation’s capacity for making primary aluminum. The companies say they expect to start construction in late 2026 and begin producing metal by the end of the decade.

“Finalizing the power agreement is the next critical step,” Ryan Plotkin, an Oklahoma-based manufacturing executive who helped lure the smelter to the state, wrote in a Tulsa World opinion piece this week. ​“Oklahoma was chosen because of our resources and reliability. Now we must follow through.”

The smelter could require over 11 terawatt-hours of power to convert raw materials into shiny aluminum — enough electricity to power the city of Boston or Nashville annually, according to an Aluminum Association report.

To secure its electricity supply, Oklahoma Primary Aluminum has been pushing for a competitive deal with Public Service Company of Oklahoma, which is a subsidiary of utility giant AEP. The aluminum company is slated to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives from the state of Oklahoma, including power discounts, along with a $500 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

“Negotiations are ongoing and remain aligned with our original timeline,” Ziad Fares, project director for Oklahoma Primary Aluminum, told Canary Media.

“The project will source power from the grid, and its energy mix will evolve based on decarbonization goals, market conditions, and demand for low-carbon aluminum,” he said, adding that decisions about expanding electricity capacity to meet the smelter’s demand — whether through gas, wind, or solar — will be made by the utility.

A spokesperson for Public Service Company of Oklahoma didn’t directly address the contract talks but said that the utility ​“works closely with large prospective customers early in the planning process to ensure safe, reliable, and cost-effective electric service.”

Aluminum production has always been closely yoked to electricity prices.

America’s fleet of smelters has shrunk in recent decades as industrial electricity rates steadily climbed, from 33 facilities in 1980 to just four operating plants. Today’s producers still face the same challenge of securing affordable, yearslong contracts. Only now, smelters are increasingly competing with data centers and electrified cars and buildings for a slice of the nation’s limited power supply.

“There’s a future in which American manufacturing in general will have more competition from other sectors for the energy that we need to be successful,” Charles Johnson, president and CEO of the Aluminum Association, said on an April 23 press call. The industry group represents companies that make about 70% of all aluminum and aluminum products shipped in North America.

As it happens, Century Aluminum recently sold an idled Kentucky smelter to a data center company, which will use the site’s existing grid capacity. The manufacturer Alcoa is in talks to sell a shuttered smelter in New York to a bitcoin mining firm as part of its larger plan to offload 10 closed or curtailed sites to the tech industry.

In the last year, the Trump administration has attempted to reverse America’s aluminum decline by slapping steep tariffs on imported metals. But while tariffs can boost the bottom line for some domestic primary producers, Johnson said the measures don’t contend with the underlying energy issues that smelters must first overcome. (In fact, Trump administration policies have made it harder to deploy the fastest and most cost-effective resources for expanding grid capacity: utility-scale wind and solar projects.)

For now, the Aluminum Association’s members have been able to adapt to the rising commodity prices and supply chain disruptions since the U.S. and Israel waged war on Iran in late February. Iran subsequently bombed the two biggest smelters in the Middle East: EGA’s Al Taweelah site in Abu Dhabi and Aluminium Bahrain’s smelter. The Gulf region accounts for about a fifth of primary and alloyed aluminum imports to the U.S.

Still, Johnson said, ​“We do think that as the conflict drags on and the strait stays closed, that the impacts on our supply chains could be more profound.”

The Oklahoma smelter, despite its massive size, will cover only a fraction of America’s demand for primary aluminum, which totals around 5 million metric tons a year — or nearly four times the combined capacity of the new and existing smelters. To reduce its reliance on imported aluminum, the U.S. will need to build multiple new smelters. That likely won’t happen without federal policies that usher more affordable, reliable electricity onto the grid, said Joe Quinn of SAFE, which advocates for policies to enhance U.S. energy security.

“The aluminum problem will be solved with an energy solution,” he said.

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Maria Gallucci

is a senior reporter at Canary Media. She covers emerging clean energy technologies and efforts to electrify transportation and decarbonize heavy industry.