Aleem Khan

To­ba­go has a sig­nif­i­cant role to play in the fu­ture of To­ba­go and Trinidad, En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said as he opened his re­marks on the is­land on Jan­u­ary 30, 2013 in the Sen­ate.

"To­ba­go is sur­round­ed by what we call prospec­tiv­i­ty. To its north­west is Block 22, where you have 1.2 tril­lion cu­bic feet of proven nat­ur­al gas re­serves and the op­er­a­tor of that block is Cen­tri­ca; Petrotrin has 10 per cent.

"To its east there are two deep­wa­ter blocks that are held by BP–this is, Block 14 and Block 23A, again very prospec­tive," he said. To the south of To­ba­go is the An­gos­tu­ra field which has been in pro­duc­tion for al­most 10 years, he said. The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) re­cent­ly con­nect­ed the An­gos­tu­ra field to Cove Es­tate in To­ba­go, he re­called.

"There­fore, To­ba­go very soon will be­gin to gen­er­ate its elec­tric­i­ty from the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) Cove Pow­er Plant us­ing nat­ur­al gas. They are cur­rent­ly us­ing diesel and it is be­ing used, of course, at a very high cost, be­cause the diesel has to be shipped to To­ba­go, and there is a sig­nif­i­cant cost to that. The pow­er plant in To­ba­go has al­ready been com­mis­sioned on diesel and it is work­ing. We ex­pect to start very soon, the com­mis­sion­ing of the pow­er plant in To­ba­go on nat­ur­al gas. Once that hap­pens, T&T will be on­ly the sec­ond coun­try in the world to gen­er­ate all its elec­tric­i­ty from nat­ur­al gas," he said.

For T&T, this will mean an even low­er car­bon foot­print, he said.

Where does that put us in the Caribbean?

"Our Caribbean broth­ers and sis­ters are buck­ling un­der the weight of high oil prices, which has af­fect­ed their bal­ance of pay­ments; it has af­fect­ed their price of elec­tric­i­ty. If you read the Ja­maican news­pa­pers–like I do on a dai­ly ba­sis–you see what is hap­pen­ing in Ja­maica. The price of elec­tric­i­ty in Ja­maica is al­most ten times the price of elec­tric­i­ty in Trinidad for do­mes­tic cus­tomers. So we have one of the cheap­est prices in the re­gion here for elec­tric­i­ty, and we be­lieve at the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, at NGC, at Cen­tri­ca and so on, that there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty to con­vert all the pow­er plants in the re­gion from fu­el oil and diesel–which is very ex­pen­sive–to nat­ur­al gas.

The min­is­ter said that the spread be­tween what T&T could ex­port nat­ur­al gas for, and the price that could be re­alised in the East­ern Caribbean "makes this trade very lu­cra­tive. It is be­cause the mil­lion British ther­mal unit (MMB­TU), the calorif­ic equiv­a­lent of diesel and fu­el oil, is some­where around US$16, US$17, US$18 per mmb­tu, if you were to con­vert a unit of fu­el oil, a unit of diesel to its equiv­a­lent price in nat­ur­al gas."

He said the spread is what is dri­ving the eco­nom­ics, and T&T has al­ready been con­tact­ed by coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca, "be­cause they too are feel­ing the pinch. Pana­ma has in­ten­tions of con­vert­ing to Liqui­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) so they will build a re­gasi­fi­ca­tion ter­mi­nal to re­ceive LNG. Cos­ta Ri­ca has sim­i­lar in­ten­tions and (so too) Guatemala."

Com­pet­ing with the USA

He then ac­knowl­edged com­pe­ti­tion in the fu­ture from the US, par­tic­u­lar­ly the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the US be­com­ing an LNG ex­porter due to that coun­try's re­serves of shale gas.

He re­ferred to re­cent re­ports that a US LNG com­pa­ny called Che­niere was plan­ning to ex­port LNG from the Sabine Pass LNG re­ceiv­ing ter­mi­nal in Louisiana.

"What an amaz­ing world we live in! So if five years ago some­body was to say that Sabine Pass would be ex­port­ing liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas they would have been de­clared mad and sent to St Ann's. But Sabine Pass Louisiana is to­day prepar­ing through Che­niere and BG and so on, to ex­port LNG. So the world is what it is, ac­cord­ing to VS Naipaul. The world is what it is, and we sim­ply have to un­der­stand how the world works," he said.

He said his gov­ern­ment has recog­nised its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com). "We have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to Cari­com as one of the lead­ers of the Caribbean. This year Cari­com com­mem­o­rate 40 years in Ch­aguara­mas, and T&T as­sumes the lead­er­ship, the chair­man­ship of Cari­com at mid-year," he said.

"There­fore, it is on­ly fit­ting that there should be a Cari­com en­er­gy min­is­ters meet­ing in Port-of-Spain on March 1, 2013 un­der the ban­ner of Cot­ed (Coun­cil on Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment), be­cause we recog­nise that we have a lead­er­ship role to play in the en­er­gy sec­tor in the re­gion," he said.

Ram­nar­ine said gov­ern­ment signed a mem­o­ran­dum of co-op­er­a­tion with Grena­da. "This was signed late last year. It is the be­lief that, of course, there is now a bor­der defin­ing Grena­da's mar­itime area and Trinidad's mar­itime area, and it is the be­lief by many ge­ol­o­gists that there is prospec­tiv­i­ty for nat­ur­al gas along that bor­der. So it would on­ly be fit­ting that giv­en that (a) we are the leader in Cari­com, we are one of the lead­ers in Cari­com; and (b) Grena­da is so close to us that we part­ner with the Grena­di­an Gov­ern­ment to ex­plore and de­vel­op nat­ur­al gas re­serves in those ar­eas. Could you imag­ine what that would mean to those economies if nat­ur­al gas were to be found?"

Ram­nar­ine said T&T's "Cari­com broth­ers and sis­ters in Guyana have been search­ing for oil very ag­gres­sive­ly over the last two to three years. They have not found oil in com­mer­cial quan­ti­ties but they have found traces of oil. It leads one to be­lieve that the trend that start­ed in French Guiana–where they found a bil­lion-bar­rel oil field–con­tin­ues in­to Guyana, Suri­name and so on, and pos­si­bly in­to our deep wa­ter."

Bil­lion bar­rels

"Our best ge­ol­o­gist be­lieves that there is some two bil­lion bar­rels of oil in T&T's deep wa­ter. Our com­mit­ment, as the Gov­ern­ment, as the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs is to fa­cil­i­tate peo­ple who want to go af­ter that oil," he said.

The min­is­ter told the Sen­ate: "Our best days are ahead of us as a coun­try. T&T's po­ten­tial is vast when it comes to the en­er­gy sec­tor. We are ex­port­ing en­er­gy ser­vices to the world."

A com­pa­ny from San Fer­nan­do, Tuck­er En­er­gy Ser­vices, he said, has a pres­ence in al­most every ma­jor en­er­gy-pro­duc­ing city in the Amer­i­c­as.

"They con­trol, I am told, 22 per cent or there­about, of the wire­line and log­ging busi­ness in Cal­gary. A com­pa­ny from Trinidad. We al­so have com­pa­nies from San Fer­nan­do do­ing busi­ness in Africa. So we are adopt­ing the North Sea mod­el in Trinidad where the British Gov­ern­ment took a strate­gic in­ter­est in de­vel­op­ing the ex­port of en­er­gy ser­vices from the North Sea to the world. And, to­day, we have the British com­pa­nies like the Wood­Group in Trinidad be­cause they de­vel­op that com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage in that en­vi­ron­ment."

?