Cur­tis Williams

Gov­ern­ment has qui­et­ly de­cid­ed to move the planned methanol-to-petro­chem­i­cals and methanol-to-olefins projects to Point Lisas and away from the La Brea In­dus­tri­al Es­tate, ac­cord­ing to mul­ti­ple en­er­gy sources. One source at the Min­istry of En­er­gy told the Guardian: "Once again La Brea will lose out on a ma­jor in­dus­tri­al project be­cause it is felt that the project is too large for La Brea and would best be placed in Point Lisas." The gov­ern­ment had promised to bring new plants to the La Brea In­dus­tri­al Es­tate fol­low­ing its de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue the Alutrint smelter project and the fact that La Brea has one of the high­est un­em­ploy­ment rates in the coun­try. but no project has come to the South West­ern vil­lage since Alutrint's demise.

The in­creas­ing­ly con­tro­ver­sial projects are yet to have fi­nal ap­proval from the Cab­i­net fol­low­ing ma­jor is­sues raised by some mem­bers of the Cab­i­net over the price of nat­ur­al gas be­ing of­fered to the Sau­di Ara­bi­an state-owned com­pa­ny SABIC (Sau­di Ba­sic In­dus­tries Cor­po­ra­tion). The SABIC pro­pos­al to build a methanol-to-petro­chem­i­cals com­plex and a methanol-to-olefins plant will use about 265 mil­lion cu­bic feet of nat­ur­al gas per day. If ap­proved, the plants will be con­struct­ed at a time when there is a short­age of nat­ur­al gas and when some plants on the Point Lisas es­tate are op­er­at­ing cur­rent­ly at 30 per cent less than their rat­ed pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to a top of­fi­cial of a down­stream plant. In ad­di­tion, the project does not in­clude the con­struc­tion of an acetic acid plant, which is con­sid­ered to be a key part of the strat­e­gy to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try in the coun­try.

Con­sid­ered a build­ing block for a mod­ern phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try, acetic acid or ethanoic acid is one of the world's most im­por­tant chem­i­cals and is used in a wide va­ri­ety of prod­ucts from tex­tiles to food pro­cess­ing and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. It is com­mon­ly known as vine­gar. Sources at the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion (NEC) said that while acetic acid is one of the build­ing blocks for the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try, it is not the on­ly route that can be tak­en to achieve the gov­ern­ment's goal of a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try. In Cab­i­net three Thurs­days ag, there was a spat be­tween En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine and for­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan over the way the project was be­ing brought for ap­proval.

Two of the con­tentious is­sues at the Cab­i­net meet­ing were the move by the Min­istry of En­er­gy to have the projects ap­proved be­fore a gas price has been agreed to and that the of­fer by SABIC was 36 per cent be­low the cost that the NGC pays for nat­ur­al gas from its sup­pli­ers. In an in­ter­view on Jan­u­ary 25, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine ac­knowl­edged that the Saud­is had bid a price for the nat­ur­al gas that was 36 per cent be­low the cost price, but in­sist­ed it was not the fi­nal fig­ure. "You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. We just have to move for­ward and de­vel­op the coun­try," Ram­nar­ine said last week. The min­is­ter said that there ap­peared to be an ef­fort to dis­cred­it the work that he has been do­ing and he in­sist­ed that all that he has pur­sued dur­ing his sev­en months in of­fice has been in T&T's in­ter­est. SABIC beat out 12 oth­er pro­pos­als for the con­struc­tion of the methanol-to-petro­chem­i­cals com­plex, but it was the sole bid­der for the methanol-to-olefins project af­ter two oth­er com­peti­tors were dis­qual­i­fied.