Af­ter the re­cent Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment meet­ing, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ments of T&T and Bar­ba­dos will once again hold dis­cus­sions on the East­ern Caribbean Gas Pipeline. Ex­ports of gas from T&T to the rest of the Caribbean re­gion are of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est at the mo­ment giv­en the fact that oil prices are high and nat­ur­al gas prices are low, es­pe­cial­ly in our tra­di­tion­al ma­jor ex­port mar­ket of the Unit­ed States. The ad­vent of shale gas and the po­ten­tial that the US may be­come a net gas ex­porter mean that there is need for a rapid re-think of our gas ex­port poli­cies in the re­gion.

Mean­while, high oil prices mean that the Caribbean is­lands, all very re­liant up­on im­port­ed diesel and fu­el oil for their elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, are very keen to ac­cess nat­ur­al gas. As any in­creas­es in nat­ur­al gas ex­ports to these mar­kets will be at the ex­pense of high-priced im­port­ed liq­uid pe­tro­le­um prod­ucts, these small mar­kets could in the­o­ry still be in­ter­est­ed in rel­a­tive­ly high nat­ur­al gas prices. This pipeline project has been on the cards for some time and, ac­cord­ing to the East­ern Caribbean Gas Pipeline Com­pa­ny, the project will in­volve con­struc­tion of a 970 kilo­me­tre (600 mile) net­work of un­der­sea pipelines from the gen­er­a­tion point in To­ba­go north­ward to five oth­er is­lands, in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos, Mar­tinique, St Lu­cia, Guade­loupe and Do­mini­ca.

Over two phas­es, the project will need an in­vest­ment of an es­ti­mat­ed $800 mil­lion and the pipeline dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem is be­ing de­vel­oped to pro­vide gas, pri­mar­i­ly for elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, a pipeline is not the on­ly op­tion avail­able to this coun­try as we seek to en­ter the emerg­ing Caribbean nat­ur­al gas and pow­er gen­er­a­tion mar­kets. There are a num­ber of dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies avail­able for the trans­port of gas from T&T to oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion, in ad­di­tion to the gas pipeline.

Small-scale LNG

One of the ma­jor en­er­gy sec­tor is­sues un­der dis­cus­sion at the re­cent Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum was the po­ten­tial for small-scale LNG in the Caribbean re­gion. The Min­is­ter of En­er­gy from the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic specif­i­cal­ly dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­creas­ing LNG ex­ports from T&T the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic us­ing new tech­nol­o­gy that makes small­er ship­ments tech­ni­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble. Os­car Pri­eto, pres­i­dent of At­lantic, con­firmed in his pre­sen­ta­tion to the con­fer­ence that this pos­si­bil­i­ty was be­ing ex­plored by the com­pa­ny.

Com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG)

One of the rea­sons why the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic is in­ter­est­ed in in­creas­ing its gas im­ports is that it is in­ter­est­ed in see­ing com­pressed nat­ur­al gas be­ing in­creas­ing­ly used as a trans­port fu­el. In May, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic is­sued 65 new li­cens­es to com­pa­nies that mar­ket nat­ur­al gas. These li­cens­es will al­low the start of op­er­a­tions by three new com­pa­nies that im­port equip­ment, the open­ing of 20 con­ver­sion shops and 42 new nat­ur­al gas sta­tions. There have al­so been ideas float­ed in the past about ship­ping gas as CNG rather than as LNG. The tech­nol­o­gy for this is rea­son­ably sim­ple, but there has not been com­mer­cial de­vel­op­ment of CNG ship­ping projects to date.

Methanol to pow­er

There has been re­search and a pi­lot project un­der­tak­en on us­ing methanol as a pow­er gen­er­a­tion fu­el. The project in­ves­ti­gates us­ing methanol in­stead of nat­ur­al gas in a mod­i­fied gas tur­bine to cre­ate elec­tric­i­ty.

With T&T be­ing the largest pro­duc­er of methanol in the world, the project ties in­to an es­tab­lished busi­ness. Methanol Hold­ings Trinidad Ltd (MHTL) and UTT part­nered for a demon­stra­tion pow­er plant, which helps pow­er two of the com­pa­ny's methanol plants. This project can al­so tie in­to re­gion­al en­er­gy sup­ply as MHTL has ten tankers which can trans­port the prod­uct and act as "a vir­tu­al pipeline." The ad­van­tage of methanol as a fu­el source is that it is easy to trans­port and store and has lim­it­ed en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pacts in case of a spill. The eco­nom­ics of us­ing methanol as a fu­el source are still un­der con­sid­er­a­tion, how­ev­er.

Un­der-sea ca­bles

An­oth­er op­tion for T&T to sup­ply gas on a "vir­tu­al ba­sis" is through pow­er gen­er­a­tion in Trinidad and sup­ply­ing pow­er by un­der­sea elec­tri­cal ca­bles to coun­tries near­er in prox­im­i­ty, such as Grena­da. Again, the tech­nol­o­gy for this is well de­vel­oped. For fu­ture growth, find­ing niche mar­kets for our gas should just be one part of the coun­try's strat­e­gy to ex­pand its re­gion­al in­flu­ence. If the coun­try is seen as part­ner, then there will al­so be more op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­ter re­gion­al mar­kets and en­try to pro­vide en­er­gy ser­vices ex­per­tise.

Oth­er re­gion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties

On­ly yes­ter­day, we host­ed Guiller­mo Her­nan­dez Perez, ex­plo­ration di­rec­tor of CU­PET-Cu­ba's state oil com­pa­ny-at an en­er­gy lun­cheon. Perez's vis­it un­der­scores the steps his coun­try is tak­ing to strength­en its re­gion­al busi­ness re­la­tion­ships as well as de­vel­op its en­er­gy in­dus­try. With­in the next year-and-a-half, five ex­plo­ration wells will be drilled in Cu­ba and there will be tan­gi­ble busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal en­er­gy ser­vices com­pa­nies. At present, more and more coun­tries, com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als are mak­ing prof­itable in­vest­ments in Cu­ba.

In fact, this year Rep­sol plans to drill its Jaguey-1 ex­plo­ration well off of Cu­ba's north coast. Cur­rent­ly, more than 50 for­eign coun­tries are do­ing busi­ness in Cu­ba as the coun­try has un­der­gone ma­jor changes over the past decade, both so­cial­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly, and, to some ex­tent, po­lit­i­cal­ly. With­in Cu­ba there is now a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty for growth and ex­pan­sion in cer­tain un­der­de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing niche mar­kets, such as the en­er­gy ser­vices sec­tor. The Cuban mar­ket is con­sid­ered vir­tu­al­ly un­tapped and presents a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for en­er­gy ser­vice com­pa­nies seek­ing busi­ness out­side of the coun­try.

Con­clu­sion

As the lead­ing en­er­gy province in the Caribbean, T&T has to take a less in­su­lat­ed view of our re­gion­al role in the sec­tor and search for niche gas mar­kets as well as re­gion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal en­er­gy ser­vice com­pa­nies. As al­ways, the En­er­gy Cham­ber is will­ing to play its part in any dis­cus­sions geared to­wards im­prov­ing re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and in­ter­con­nect­ed­ness.

EN­ER­GY CHAM­BER

For more in­for­ma­tion,

vis­it: www.en­er­gy.tt