NADALEEN SINGH

Gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to add new sub­si­dies on­to CNG, to en­cour­age more mo­torists to use the fu­el and pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment. "Com­pressed Nat­ur­al Gas (CNG) is the way to go," said En­er­gy Min­is­ter Con­rad Enill, adding that util­is­ing more CNG will en­hance T&T's com­mit­ment to the en­vi­ron­ment, and is a main item on the agen­da at the Copen­hagen Sum­mit. "The pro­mo­tion of CNG us­age fur­thers the Gov­ern­ment's com­mit­ment to the Copen­hagen Sum­mit in recog­nis­ing the on­set of glob­al warm­ing and play­ing our part in min­imis­ing the out­pour­ings of green­house gas­es," Enill said. Ad­dress­ing stake­hold­ers at the launch of the Cham­ber's Cen­ten­ni­al En­er­gy di­gest, Enill said the project is still in its plan­ning stages, but gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to do­ing its part to pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment.

"Con­sis­tent with this pol­i­cy shift, Gov­ern­ment would soon an­nounce a full plan for the re-launch of CNG as an al­ter­na­tive ve­hic­u­lar fu­el," Enill said. Re­fer­ring to the en­er­gy sec­tor, Enill an­tic­i­pates that there are try­ing times ahead, but he did not ex­plain fur­ther what it meant for the en­er­gy sec­tor in 2010. He de­clared that now is the time for T&T to steer the course of the oil and gas in­dus­try and to im­ple­ment new en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-safe en­er­gy poli­cies where nat­ur­al gas would play a crit­i­cal role. "It is es­ti­mat­ed that there would be a 49-75 per cent re­duc­tion in car­bon monox­ide emis­sions, a 25 per cent re­duc­tion in car­bon diox­ide emis­sions a 39-90 per cent re­duc­tion in ni­tro­gen ox­ide emis­sion and an al­most to­tal elim­i­na­tion of par­tic­u­late mat­ter from diesel en­gines," Enill said. "The coun­try will ben­e­fit from the re­duc­tion in sub­sidy on gaso­line and diesel and in­creased ex­port earn­ings from re­leased liq­uid pe­tro­le­um fu­els," Enill said.

On the is­sue of Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) Enill said T&T would con­tin­ue to be a ma­jor ex­porter of LNG since the US mar­ket is blos­som­ing. "At cur­rent lev­els of de­mand, the US has about 90 years of proven and po­ten­tial sup­ply and with more drilling ex­pe­ri­ence, it is en­vis­aged that US es­ti­mates will like­ly rise even fur­ther in the next few years. There are im­pli­ca­tions for T&T, as 70 per cent of our LNG shipped to the US," Enill said. But it's not smooth sail­ing when it comes to change as Enill said there are chal­lenges when it comes to the change of fo­cus in the en­er­gy sec­tor. "We can make no mis­take as to the con­sid­er­able sup­ply of US shale gas, as gas re­serves moved from 616 tcf in 200 to 2074 tcf in 2008. This sub­stan­tial in­crease has re­cal­i­brat­ed the sup­ply dy­nam­ics of the glob­al nat­ur­al gas mar­ket," Enill said.