Raphael John-Lall

The Gov­ern­ment in­tends to im­ple­ment checks and bal­ances to en­sure that the il­le­gal sale of diesel is stopped, says En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine. "Around all the as­pects of the diesel sup­ply chain, the min­istry will be im­ple­ment­ing some checks and bal­ances to bet­ter au­dit the move­ment of diesel from the whole­saler which is ei­ther Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) or Unipet and at this point in time, all the way to the end user," he said. Ram­nar­ine was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's week­ly post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair.

Trinidad and To­ba­go's sub­sidy for diesel for the fis­cal year 2010/2011 is es­ti­mat­ed in ex­cess of $3.5 bil­lion.

Un­der the Pe­tro­le­um Pro­duc­tion Levy and Sub­sidy Act, it is il­le­gal to sell fu­el to non-T&T na­tion­als and ves­sels un­less the fu­el is to be used in T&T. Ram­nar­ine said all fish­ing ves­sels must now reg­is­ter with the Min­istry of En­er­gy. "With re­spect to fish­ing ves­sels where we con­sid­er to be a ma­jor source of leak­age, we will re­quire all fish­ing ves­sels that are lo­cal­ly reg­is­tered to re­ceive a cer­tifi­cate of com­pli­ance from the Min­istry of En­er­gy if they are to re­ceive sub­sidised diesel," he said.

"The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion will in­clude in­for­ma­tion with re­spect to the size of the en­gine of the ves­sel," he said. He added that changes would be made to leg­is­la­tion. "We will al­so be mak­ing some leg­isla­tive changes to the pe­tro­le­um leg­is­la­tion with re­spect to ped­dlers," he said. "The ped­dlers are those peo­ple who buy fu­el from ei­ther NP or Unipet and then sell it to large cus­tomers. "The ad­min­is­tra­tive mea­sure will be that be­fore fu­el is re­leased, they would have to present a pur­chase or­der to the Min­istry of En­er­gy and the min­istry will au­tho­rise re­lease of fu­el." Ram­nar­ine said there was a re­la­tion­ship be­tween the price of oil in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and the il­le­gal trade.

"What the re­search is al­so show­ing is there is an re­la­tion­ship be­tween the in­ter­na­tion­al oil price and the de­mand for the il­le­gal fu­el be­cause as the price of oil in­crease, it in­creas­es the price of fu­el in oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean and this fu­els the de­mand for the con­tra­band sub­stance," he said. The min­is­ter said the Min­istry of En­er­gy would con­tin­ue work­ing with the law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties to en­sure per­pe­tra­tors of this ac­tiv­i­ty are caught. "The oth­er side of the prob­lem is catch­ing peo­ple in the act and I want to con­grat­u­late the of­fi­cers of the Coast Guard for the work they have been do­ing in the last week or two and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion," he said."They have been work­ing with small team from the Min­istry of En­er­gy."

He re­peat­ed that al­most half of the fu­el sub­sidy was lost in this il­le­gal trade. "The fig­ure varies from year to year de­pend­ing on the in­ter­na­tion­al price of oil," Ram­nar­ine said. "We es­ti­mate it to be some­where in the re­gion of about 40 per cent of the sub­sidy on an an­nu­al ba­sis be­ing frit­tered away as a con­se­quence of this il­le­gal trade."