Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment will ex­plore en­er­gy mar­ket ex­pan­sion with the Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion which ar­rives in T&T to­mor­row, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine has said.Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Ram­nar­ine ac­knowl­edged T&T will have to seek new mar­kets for en­er­gy prod­ucts since its main cus­tomer, the Unit­ed States, projects en­er­gy self-suf­fi­cien­cy by 2020 and has boast­ed of enough shale oil sup­ply to "last 100 years."

The 280-strong Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion, led by Chi­na's Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping, ar­rives in T&T to­mor­row night and will spend Sat­ur­day tour­ing projects, in­clud­ing the chil­dren's hos­pi­tal con­struc­tion site, be­fore leav­ing on Sun­day.The Chi­nese del­e­ga­tion ar­rival comes on the heels of a vis­it by US Vice-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden ear­li­er this week.

At yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net brief­ing, Ram­nar­ine said the price of nat­ur­al gas in Chi­na was three times the price in the US. He said T&T had al­ready sup­plied four car­goes of liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas to Chi­na and this was in­creased re­cent­ly to five."We ex­pect this will in­crease," he added.He said the ex­pan­sion of the Pana­ma Canal would al­so fa­cil­i­tate sup­ply flows be­tween T&T and Chi­na.

Ram­nar­ine said dur­ing Wednes­day's vis­it by Biden, a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing was signed to­wards col­lab­o­ra­tion on re­new­able en­er­gy, in­clud­ing so­lar, wind and oth­er types of en­er­gy.He said the agree­ment in­clud­ed a re­new­able en­er­gy cen­tre which would serve the Caribbean and would be fund­ed by the in­come from pro­duc­tion-shar­ing con­tracts.

Not­ing po­ten­tial fall-off of US en­er­gy busi­ness as that coun­try looks in­ward for its sup­ply, Ram­nar­ine added: "(So) the in­dus­try in T&T has to evolve and stay com­pet­i­tive. We've draft­ed a na­tion­al en­er­gy pol­i­cy, now be­ing fine-tuned, be­fore be­ing tak­en to Cab­i­net."Ram­nar­ine said in­ter­est has been ex­pressed in an­oth­er bid round, cur­rent­ly open, in­volv­ing three blocks of land – 150,000 acres. A deep-wa­ter bid round for six blocks will be launched in June.

The pro­duc­tion-shar­ing con­tract with BHP Bil­li­ton, now be­ing vet­ted, is like­ly to be signed next month, he added. Ram­nar­ine said the Ry­der Scott au­dit re­port is al­so ex­pect­ed in Ju­ly.Ram­nar­ine al­so said rec­om­men­da­tions had been made to im­prove pow­er sys­tems for the coun­try fol­low­ing the Good Fri­day na­tion­wide black­out which was trig­gered by a shut­down of the Phoenix Park plant.

Rec­om­men­da­tions in­clud­ed mak­ing sta­tions ca­pa­ble of self-start­ing when out­ages oc­cur, by­pass ca­pac­i­ty at Phoenix Park and the NSC, in­stalling dual fu­el ca­pac­i­ty at pow­er sta­tions and in­fra­struc­ture to al­low T&TEC to source all pow­er from Trinidad Gen­er­a­tion Un­lim­it­ed.