As pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas con­tin­ues to de­cline and T&T con­tin­ues to be af­fect­ed by liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) out­put cur­tail­ments, Ja­maica has opened its first nat­ur­al gas plant and wants to po­si­tion it­self as a fu­ture LNG hub in the re­gion.

Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness, speak­ing at the re­cent open­ing of a US$175 mil­lion LNG ter­mi­nal in Mon­tego Bay, said in­tro­duc­tion of LNG in­to the coun­try's en­er­gy mix could be a re­al game chang­er with the po­ten­tial to rapid­ly im­prove Ja­maica's eco­nom­ic for­tunes. He said Ja­maica is strate­gi­cal­ly poised to be­come the LNG hub of the re­gion.

"En­er­gy is the most suc­cess­ful struc­tur­al ad­just­ment en­deav­our that the gov­ern­ment has ever un­der­tak­en. Our eco­nom­ic pro­gramme, our fis­cal pro­gramme and now specif­i­cal­ly our eco­nom­ic growth pro­gramme, will be im­pact­ed pos­i­tive­ly as a re­sult of these ground­break­ing moves," he said.

US com­pa­ny New Fortress En­er­gy LLC in­vest­ed US$175 to con­struct the LNG ter­mi­nal at the Mon­tego Bay port.

Hol­ness his ad­min­is­tra­tion has no in­ten­tion of let­ting up on the nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties now avail­able and plans are well ad­vanced for con­struc­tion of an­oth­er fa­cil­i­ty in Old Har­bour.

Mean­while, lat­est avail­able da­ta points to a con­tin­ued de­cline in LNG pro­duc­tion at this coun­try's sole liq­ue­fac­tion and ex­port fa­cil­i­ty at Point Fortin. At­lantic LNG pro­duced 1.93 mil­lion cu­bic me­ters as com­pared to 2.24 mil­lion cu­bic me­ters in April last year, ac­cord­ing to da­ta by from the Min­istry of En­er­gy. LNG sales and de­liv­er­ies from At­lantic LNG's fa­cil­i­ty came to 44.9 mil­lion MMB­tu, a de­cline of 12 per­cent from last year, the da­ta showed.

LNG pro­duc­tion has been sink­ing for more than a year due to gas short­ages and pro­duc­tion av­er­aged 3.4 Bcf/d in April, down six per cent from the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

Ear­li­er this year, At­lantic's CEO Nigel Dar­low warned that the plant is at record low lev­els of util­i­sa­tion and is "fail­ing to de­liv­er on its LNG com­mit­ments".