Wednesday, Guyana said it was ready to build its own refinery. This came less than 24 hours after Trinidad and Tobago said it was ready to help countries in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) develop their oil and gas industries.
Port of Spain also said that it had made it a goal to work with its neighbors in the energy sector to improve economic cooperation.
Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley told more than 1,200 people at the opening of Guyana’s International Energy Conference and Expo yesterday that major oil discoveries in Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, Belize, and Trinidad and Tobago have made crude oil, which was once thought to be on the edge of the region, the center of attention.
“However, in the economy we have now, investments in infrastructure and technology can be so expensive that they are impossible. Trinidad and Tobago has the energy infrastructure to turn its neighbors’ hydrocarbon resources into money.
Rowley said that Trinidad and Tobago has 10 ammonia plants, 7 methanol plants, 4 LNG plants, an iron and steel complex that used 4 bcf of natural gas per day at its peak, and an oil refinery that could process up to 140,000 barrels of oil per day.
He said that Trinidad and Tobago produces an average of 2.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day and that the country is still looking for a buyer for the oil refinery.
“Trinidad and Tobago is therefore a good choice for countries that want to get the most money out of their hydrocarbon resources without spending a lot of money on capital,” he said.
But the minister of natural resources, Vickram Bharrat, said that the government of Irfaan Ali wants to build its own refinery.
“We want to build our own refinery in the country,” he told reporters. “We want to be self-sufficient in terms of energy, so we’re moving toward setting up the refinery in the country.”
Bharrat told the pro-government publication News Room that the government had already put out a Request for Proposals for a privately owned 30,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery in East Berbice-Corentyne and that a decision would soon be made based on the nine proposals received.
Bharrat said that Guyana needs about 15,000 barrels of oil per day right now, and that this 30,000-barrel-per-day refinery should be enough to meet the growing demand for energy.
Bharrat said that Guyana wants to work with Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname on natural gas in order to make money off of that resource as well.
“Trinidad has the know-how and experience, and to be honest, we haven’t been putting too much attention on gas.
“We have spent a lot of time on oil, and rightly so, because of the price of oil,” Bharrat said. “But the way the world is going, the demand for oil might not last long, but gas is seen as a transitional fuel.”
In his speech to the conference on Wednesday, Bharrat told delegates that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is setting up a system to monitor the country’s forests in real time, similar to how the government currently monitors oil and gas activities offshore.
He said that the work done by the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) and the Guyana Forestry Commission will be helped by the EPA project (GFC).
“Between the GFC and the GGMC, we have more than 50 stations in the middle of the country that are staffed by forest and mining officers. We also have the Compliance Department and more than 50 wardens. And there are two of them. We have more than 500 officers in different places in the interior where there is a lot of mining and logging.
Bharrat said that Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo would have talked about the monitoring, reporting, and verification system (MRVS), saying that it “has been helping us to monitor our forest coverage.”
“The EPA is going to start using a new system very soon. We’ve already started using it offshore Guyana, but we’ll also start using it in our forests, said Bharrat, adding that the government can already watch oil and gas activities offshore from afar.
“In addition to what we can do on the ground, we’re moving it to our forests and mining. Because we have to start using technology at some point. We haven’t done that very often.
“In terms of forestry, it’s pretty easy to keep an eye on what’s going on in the woods. “I often tell loggers and anyone else who asks that you don’t see a man running around with a log on his back or trying to hide from us every day,” Bharrat said at the conference.
