Ramnarine: Energy companies show interest in deepwater drilling in T&T

Deepwater drilling is where the world is heading and foreign energy companies are interested in coming to T&T for drilling in this area says Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine. “Deepwater exploration is the way the world is going. We have not been able to produce or find anything in the deepwater yet but from what we are seeing from the data, there could be significant resources in the deepwater. What has happened to change the picture in T&T is that there was a major discovery in French Guyana last year. That has made the entire basin a lot more prospective. That has derisked the entire area.

“The companies that are indicating  interest in the deepwater bid round are saying to us that has been one of their most major factors for entering T&T,” he said. He was speaking to the media on Monday at the opening day of the three day 2012 Energy Conference entitled “Developing Resources for Sustainability” at the Hyatt Hotel, Port-of-Spain.

“I do not want to reveal the names of the companies right now because we will only reveal that at that point in time. But I will say that to participate in deep water you must have deep pockets and there are really only a dozen or so companies in the world that has that kind of depth in their pockets,” he said.

He also spoke about the reduction for the demand for diesel and like on previous occasions Ramnarine explained that the application of dye will make persons able to distinguish between subsidised diesel and unsubsidised diesel. “We were able to reduce the subsidy claim to people by 20 per cent year on year for the first six months of fiscal 2012. That decrease in the demand for diesel was offset by the increase in the price internationally.

“So from a monetary point of view there has been no impact really. It would have been a lot worse if we had not intervened last year and continuing this year. The next intervention will be the introduction of the dye into the fuel. We are working with the T&T Bureau of Standards and National Petroleum (NP) on that,” he said. He said Guyana introduced dye in that country into the diesel and it helped reduce the illegal diesel trade.

“As I said last week, for the first six months of 2012, the subsidy claim is running at about $1.6 billion. It still is very significant. I think with introduction of dye and I have been advised by my counterpart in Guyana they have introduced the dye there, it has had a major impact on the illegal diesel trade there. “The loading bay at Caroni will be operationalised by the end of the year and we expect that to be the point where we inject dye into the fuel,” he said.