The Government‘s handling of the multi-billion dollar Liquefied Natural Gas, LNG, project is to be probed by Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee, PAAC.
This follows a recent newspaper report that the Government has
THE country cannot continue to depend on oil if the island intends to make meaningful progress with its economy, a leading energy engineer has said.
Certified energy manager and energy auditor, Owen Gunning, who is also president of the Jamaica Society of Energy Engineers, wants a full-scale effort to be made to reduce Jamaica‘s dependence on oil as its base fuel and insists that a ‘more action, less talk’ approach should be adopted.
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Observer Monday Exchange guests (from left) Alando Terrelonge, partner at Bailey Terrelonge Allen; Edison Galbraith, general manager, loan origination, Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ); Christopher Brown, energy project co-ordinator, DBJ; and Owen Gunning, certified energy manager, certified energy auditor and president of the Jamaica Society of Energy Engineers, continue the discussion on energy efficiency following the end of the Exchange yesterday at the newspaper
Residents of Providence in Montego Bay, St James, who have not yet regularised their service with Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) have until Friday to do so or be left without electricity. The JPS said sections being targeted are Mahogany Drive, Church Hill Road and an area commonly known as Providence Capture. It said these are the areas in which the company has been installing its new, more secure Residential Advanced Metering Infrastructure system. According to the light and power company, it has been reaching out to residents to be a part of the electricity regularisation programme for more than a year. It said it has offered house-wiring assistance loans and established temporary offices in the community to help resolve any outstanding matters. editorial@gleanerjm.com Read more:
Zacca
WITH ENERGY Minister Phillip Paulwell scheduled to address the House of Representatives today, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) says it wants him to provide clarity on the way forward for the implementation of liquefied natural gas (LNG). “We are looking for transparency and we are looking for some certainty because we feel this issue has got to be addressed in a way that the wider society buys into it and in particular, my constituency, the business sector needs to get that confidence booster out of it,” Chris Zacca, head of the PSOJ, told participants in a Gleaner Editors’ Forum at the the newspaper’s central Kingston head offices yesterday. There have been jitters in the society ever since
Communities in ten parishes are without electricity as the rains have impacted Jamaica Public Service Company, JPS, supply systems. JPS says its technical teams have been responding to reports of
Gasoline retailers could scrap a plan to stop accepting credit cards for fuel purchases if financial institutions agree to revise their processing fees. The Jamaica Gasoline Retailers Association (JGRA), yesterday put on hold, its decision for members to cease accepting Visa and MasterCard credit cards. The news came just hours before the scheduled implementation. The suspension is until November 1. JGRA President Derrick Thompson says if
Winston Hay, energy consultant and former director general of OUR. – Ian Allen/Photographer
Avia Collinder, Business Writer Energy consultant Winston Hay says that while plans for use of LNG for power generation in Jamaica are in principle sound, the uncertainty around the cost of that fuel should not be ignored. LNG is now selling at record prices in Asia where Japan as a top consumption market reportedly pays the highest price. Hay, who was once the head of the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR), said that application of relatively new technology – fracking – in the United States has led to greater extraction of “shale gas” at greater depths than had previously been exploited. And it has dramatically decreased the price of natural gas in that country. But the stability of those prices is uncertain and the Henry Hub price reports have already begun to show a significant upward trend, he said. Production doesn’t affect price Importantly, he adds, the price of LNG does not vary directly with natural gas production costs. Flammable gasses trapped in the earth and consisting primarily of methane are found in many areas of the world – the Middle East, Russia, Nigeria, Australia, Nigeria and North America, for instance. LNG has been used for decades as a source of heat for industrial processes, cooking, household heating, and other uses, but only in relatively small quantities for electricity generation until about the late 1960s, with development of the combined-cycle technology. “The aggregate costs of delivering the gas to the liquefaction facility, the liquefaction process itself, transport by specially constructed vessels to the FSRU, operational costs of the FSRU and Jamaica Gas Trust, delivery by pipeline (yet to be constructed) to the end-users, etc, will all increase the price of gas from LNG significantly above that of the gas extracted from the earth,” Hay said. Further, he notes, commodity prices are not necessarily determined by production costs. “The demand-supply ratio is often more significant. The indications are that the demand for LNG internationally will steadily increase and therefore apply upward pressure on the prices of that commodity,” he said. Several worldwide developments, he said, are likely to push LNG prices higher:
The Jamaica Gasolene Retailers Association (JGRA), says as of October 1, service stations will no longer accept Master or Visa credit cards for fuel sales. However, it said traditional debit cards will be accepted. In August, members of the association agreed to stop accepting credit cards as part of cost saving measures. The JGRA has complained that the unacceptable processing fees charged by financial institutions are sometimes higher than profit margins. editorial@gleanerjm.com Read more:
FOLLOWING THE revocation of an exploration licence, which was granted to Rainville Energy Corp, a subsidiary of Sagres Energy, to drill for oil, Energy Minister Phillip Paulwell has signalled that another company that was granted a licence could have it cancelled if they don’t begin drilling soon. The Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica yesterday said the failure of Rainville to meet its financial obligations has resulted in the revocation. Under the agreement, which dates back to 2006, Rainville should have secured the necessary funding for the second phase of the programme which began in May 2012. Among other things, this phase involved the drilling of an exploratory well by November 2013. Paulwell told |