The T&T gov­ern­ment is yet to de­cide on whether it will al­low gas from this coun­try to be ex­port­ed to Bar­ba­dos and the oth­er East­ern Caribbean coun­tries, ac­cord­ing to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan. She said the Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about whether it has the gas to ex­port to the oth­er Cari­com coun­tries and the French de­pen­dants of Guade­loupe and Mar­tinique. "It is the con­cern of the Min­istry of En­er­gy that this project comes at a time when we ex­pect a dip in our gas pro­duc­tion. It is ex­pect­ed to come to fruition just two years be­fore that ex­pect­ed dip. That is our con­cern be­cause, as you know, these are long-term con­tracts that we will have to en­ter up­on."

The min­is­ter's state­ment comes mere weeks be­fore a team is ex­pect­ed in T&T from Bar­ba­dos to be­gin ne­go­ti­a­tions with var­i­ous agen­cies and lo­cal com­pa­nies as they try to ham­mer out com­mer­cial and le­gal terms for nat­ur­al gas to be ex­port­ed to Bar­ba­dos from To­ba­go. The ne­go­ti­a­tions fol­low project ap­proval grant­ed by the gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos ear­li­er this year for the East­ern Caribbean gas pipeline project. It was ex­pect­ed that Bar­ba­dos will re­ceive its first tranche of gas in Jan­u­ary 2014. Greg Rich, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the East­ern Gas Pipeline Com­pa­ny, said he ex­pect­ed all the ne­go­ti­a­tions to be com­plet­ed in 18 to 24 months and, fol­low­ing that, the pipeline will be laid from the Cove In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in To­ba­go to Bar­ba­dos.

The gas will be used for pow­er gen­er­a­tion and will be sold to the Bar­ba­dos Light and Pow­er. Rich ex­plained that Bar­ba­dos Light and Pow­er will see a re­duc­tion in its fu­el bill by be­tween 15 and 25 per cent, with the com­pa­ny us­ing nat­ur­al gas from T&T rather than diesel fu­el. Re­gard­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal con­sid­er­a­tions, he said Bar­ba­dos tourism could be pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ed by it turn­ing to the clean­er-burn­ing nat­ur­al gas. The Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment has ar­gued that the project will bring some pre­dictabil­i­ty to the cost of elec­tric­i­ty and there­by re­move the un­cer­tain­ty its pop­u­la­tion faces from chang­ing oil prices. The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Ltd is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide the gas from T&T's do­mes­tic grid, but it is like­ly that NGC would pur­chase the gas from BHP Bil­li­ton's pro­duc­tion in Block 2c.

Rich said Bar­ba­dos is just the first stop and that the pipeline will be con­struct­ed to take gas as far north as the French de­part­ments of Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe, with spurs to oth­er is­lands, like St Lu­cia and Do­mini­ca. He said the project will cost an es­ti­mat­ed US$350 mil­lion and, at times, will at­tract high­er prices for T&T's gas than it gets from LNG at the Hen­ry Hub.?All of this could be in jeop­ardy, though, with the gas po­ten­tial­ly not be­ing avail­able. Seep­er­sad-Bachan said her po­si­tion was no dif­fer­ent from the one adopt­ed by the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment, al­though the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion had stat­ed pub­licly it was in sup­port of the project.

"The po­si­tion of the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs is no dif­fer­ent from the one adopt­ed by the pre­vi­ous regime in that no de­ci­sion has been tak­en on whether the gas will be made avail­able."

The min­is­ter said the project is one be­ing dri­ven by the pri­vate sec­tor and that the East­ern Caribbean Gas Pipeline Com­pa­ny was free to go ahead and con­struct a pipeline be­tween T&T and Bar­ba­dos but, at this stage, there is no de­ci­sion on if the gas will be avail­able.

"This is a pri­vate sec­tor project. We have no prob­lem with it in prin­ci­ple, but we have to have the gas to sell if it is go­ing to work. They can build the pipeline if they want, but we will have to sign off on any gas that is ex­port­ed. They can­not ne­go­ti­ate any pri­vate arrange­ment with a sup­pli­er un­less there is gov­ern­ment ap­proval," the min­is­ter said. Two of the largest share­hold­ers in the East­ern Caribbean gas pipeline project are the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion and NGC.

En­er­gy re­porter