Aleem Khan

Ja­maica hopes to sign an en­er­gy co-op­er­a­tion agree­ment with T&T "in a mat­ter of weeks" Ja­maican Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­er­gy and Min­ing Phillip Paulwell said dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad in Port-of-Spain Fri­day. He said Ja­maica hopes to sign the co-op­er­a­tion agree­ment with T&T to help his coun­try bring down its elec­tric­i­ty cost of US$0.40 per kilo­watt-hour, one of the high­est in the re­gion. Paulwell was speak­ing at the end of the third day of a three-day Min­is­te­r­i­al Ses­sion of the 41st spe­cial meet­ing of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty's (Cari­com) Coun­cil for Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (Cot­ed) on En­er­gy.

The thrust of the new en­er­gy pol­i­cy, not yet a pub­lic doc­u­ment as it has to be first ap­proved by the Cari­com heads of state, is that the re­gion will fo­cus on be­com­ing al­most 100 per cent re­liant on re­new­able en­er­gy by the year 2020.

The pol­i­cy sets a se­ries of tar­get dates by which Caribbean coun­tries are to phase out diesel and gas as fu­el for their pow­er plants, and har­ness wind, so­lar and hy­dro pow­er in­stead, Be­lizean Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Joy Grant said.

Do­mini­can Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Works, En­er­gy and Ports Ray­burn Black­moore, who chaired the news con­fer­ence, said this is "a very salient point" be­cause on­ly T&T, Be­lize and Bar­ba­dos have proven ex­trac­tive re­sources of ei­ther oil or gas or both, and the oth­er Caribbean coun­tries are hav­ing to grap­ple with high in­ter­na­tion­al oil prices.

On the co­op­er­a­tion agree­ment with Ja­maica, T&T's Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Kevin Ram­nar­ine said: "In the pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion of the dis­cus­sion, the dis­cus­sion was fo­cused on the sup­ply of LNG (liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas). We have now ex­pand­ed that dis­cus­sion to look fur­ther down the val­ue chain, in Ja­maica, with re­gard not on­ly to ship­ping and sup­ply, but at the re­gasi­fi­ca­tion lev­el."

He said Ja­maica will be con­struct­ing a new re­gasi­fi­ca­tion plant as well as a new 360 megawatt pow­er plant.

Paulwell told re­porters af­ter the news con­fer­ence: "Un­til we get cheap­er en­er­gy, our min­ing sec­tor is not go­ing to grow. In fact, it af­fects al­so our ser­vices sec­tor, tourism, our ICTs (in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies) and so on, so en­er­gy is the most crit­i­cal is­sue that af­fects Ja­maica's pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, our growth and cre­ation of jobs."

The dis­cus­sions on en­er­gy with T&T were "of great dis­ap­point­ment in the past," he said.

The Ja­maican en­er­gy min­is­ter said that through the co-op­er­a­tion agree­ment, "We (Ja­maica) are hop­ing to be able to sup­ply the 360 megawatt fa­cil­i­ty with LNG."

Asked how much gas the plant will need, he said: "It will re­quire just about 500,000 tonnes."

Hours ear­li­er, the min­is­ters with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for en­er­gy re­lat­ed mat­ters for T&T and Guyana, signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing that pro­motes greater co­op­er­a­tion be­tween both coun­tries on en­er­gy. T&T's Ram­nar­ine and Guyana's Min­is­ter of Nat­ur­al Re­sources Robert Per­saud signed the MoU fol­low­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the Cot­ed meet­ing.

?