The com­ple­tion of the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny's nat­ur­al gas re­ceiv­ing fa­cil­i­ty at the Cove In­dus­tri­al Es­tate in To­ba­go opens the door to the sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas to the East­ern Caribbean, ac­cord­ing to Wade Hamil­ton, NGC's vice pres­i­dent of tech­ni­cal ser­vices.

Hamil­ton was speak­ing with the Busi­ness Guardian last week fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial open­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Jan­u­ary 14.

The ini­tial pur­pose of the fa­cil­i­ty is to sup­ply nat­ur­al gas to cus­tomers of the Cove In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, the first of which is the T&TEC pow­er plant.

The NGC nat­ur­al gas pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ty is lo­cat­ed next door to the T&TEC pow­er plant, which is ex­pect­ed to start pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty by the end of the first quar­ter, Hamil­ton said.

The fa­cil­i­ty is de­signed to ac­com­mo­date two trains each pro­cess­ing about 100 mil­lion cu­bic feet a day of nat­ur­al gas.

At present, on­ly one pro­cess­ing train has been in­stalled and there­fore the fa­cil­i­ty's cur­rent pro­cess­ing ca­pac­i­ty is 100 mil­lion cu­bic feet a day.

Hamil­ton said To­ba­go's en­tire cur­rent de­mand for elec­tric­i­ty can be sat­is­fied with be­tween 10 and 12 mil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas a day, which means that there is po­ten­tial­ly sur­plus gas that can be sup­plied to East­ern Caribbean na­tions such as Bar­ba­dos.

The pipeline from To­ba­go to the East­ern Caribbean is a project that is pon­sored by the East­ern Caribbean Gas Pipeline Com­pa­ny Ltd (ECG­PC).

US firms con­trol

In the first phase, the com­pa­ny pro­pos­es to build a 285-kilo­me­tre sub­ma­rine pipeline start­ing from Cove Es­tate in To­ba­go and run­ning to Bar­ba­dos. In the sec­ond stage, the ex­port of piped nat­ur­al gas would be ex­pand­ed to St Lu­cia, Do­mini­ca, Mar­tinique, and Guade­loupe.

Ac­cord­ing to a Jan­u­ary 2012 state­ment, two US pri­vate eq­ui­ty firms, Be­owulf En­er­gy LLC and First Re­serve En­er­gy In­ter­na­tion­al Fund, ac­quired a 60 per cent stake in ECG­PC. The bal­ance of the pipeline com­pa­ny is owned by lo­cal com­pa­nies Guardian Hold­ings with 15 per cent, Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion with 15 per cent and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny with 10 per cent.

In ad­di­tion to op­er­a­tions in the US, Be­owulf En­er­gy owns Trin­i­ty Pow­er, which op­er­ates the 225 megawatt, nat­ur­al gas-fired pow­er gen­er­a­tion fa­cil­i­ty on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

The pipeline is ex­pect­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er the cost of pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty in coun­tries such as Bar­ba­dos which re­ly pri­mar­i­ly on fu­el oil to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty.

ECG­PC spokesman, Gre­go­ry Rich said: "The com­pa­ny is ex­cit­ed to have Be­owulf and FREIF as ma­jor­i­ty project spon­sors in this ground-break­ing re­gion­al en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture project.

"The ex­ten­sive en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture ex­pe­ri­ence and sub­stan­tial fi­nan­cial re­sources of Be­owulf and FREIF will ac­cel­er­ate the im­ple­men­ta­tion of this re­gion­al­ly im­por­tant project there­by cre­at­ing long term val­ue for the com­pa­ny's in­vestors while de­liv­er­ing tan­gi­ble fi­nan­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits to the is­lands served by the pipeline."

The pro­cess­ing of the nat­ur­al gas by the new fa­cil­i­ty on the Cove Es­tate in­cludes re­mov­ing wa­ter and con­den­sate (hy­dro­car­bon liq­uids) from the nat­ur­al gas stream.

NGC is con­sid­er­ing two op­tions for the dis­pos­al of the con­den­sate: The pri­ma­ry op­tion is the sale of the con­den­sate to a third par­ty on the is­land for use in as­phalt man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions, while the oth­er op­tion is the trans­porta­tion of the con­den­sate back to Trinidad via car­go ves­sel for sale to Petrotrin.

About the fa­cil­i­ty

The first nat­ur­al gas was re­ceived in To­ba­go on No­vem­ber 2, 2012 at 5.20pm.

The project, which was in­ter­nal­ly fi­nanced by NGC, cost about $1 bil­lion (US$185 mil­lion) and was in two parts:

�2 A 54-kilo­me­tre sub­ma­rine pipeline cost­ing US$130 mil­lion, which ex­tends from a plat­form in BHP Bil­li­ton's An­gos­tu­ra field to the Cove In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. The pipeline is 12 inch­es and is con­nect­ed to the plat­form by a sub­sea man­i­fold;

�2 The ter­mi­nal at the Cove In­dus­tri­al Es­tate cost be­tween US$50 to US$55 mil­lion.

Hamil­ton said the project was ini­tial­ly due to start in 2008 but was post­poned for one year due to the on­set of the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis.