DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

Methanex Trinidad is seek­ing to en­gage the Gov­ern­ment in its new methanol fu­el-blend­ing ini­tia­tive as an al­ter­na­tive to gaso­line. Charles Per­cy, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor/chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Methanex made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day dur­ing the com­pa­ny's Me­dia Lunch and Learn con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.

Per­cy said the po­ten­tial ben­e­fit from the fu­el-blend­ing ini­tia­tive is to free up sub­sidised gaso­line for ex­port which would in turn lead to high­er rev­enues for T&T. Two weeks ago, Methanex and Methanol Hold­ings signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) as its first step in pro­mot­ing this ini­tia­tive for the lo­cal mar­ket.

The MOU al­so pro­vid­ed a frame­work for the two com­pa­nies to de­vel­op and ex­e­cute a pi­lot pro­gramme to demon­strate the tech­ni­cal suit­abil­i­ty of blend­ing methanol in­to gaso­line and the es­tab­lish­ment of an eco­nom­ic mod­el con­cern­ing the blend­ing of methanol in­to gaso­line in the lo­cal mar­ket. Per­cy said the com­pa­ny had al­ready be­gun dis­cus­sions with the Gov­ern­ment and Petrotrin in the in­dus­try and was re­ceiv­ing favourable feed­back. He added that they would be pre­sent­ing the eco­nom­ic mod­el to the Gov­ern­ment soon. He said methanol fu­el blend­ing has al­ready gained mo­men­tum on the in­ter­na­tion­al scene as Chi­na was lead­ing in this en­er­gy ap­pli­ca­tion. In Chi­na, it was es­ti­mat­ed that ten per cent of the world's 2009 methanol pro­duc­tion was blend­ed in­to gaso­line mar­ket last year, he stat­ed.

Al­so speak­ing at the con­fer­ence was John Flo­ren, Methanex se­nior vice pres­i­dent in the mar­ket­ing and lo­gis­tics de­part­ment, who stat­ed that it was an eco­nom­ic ad­van­tage for the coun­try be­cause it would be blend­ed here. He said it was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T as Methanex is the world largest sup­pli­er of methanol and con­se­quent­ly T&T, is the lead­ing glob­al pro­duc­er of methanol which ul­ti­mate­ly would pro­vide a sig­nif­i­cant po­ten­tial for fu­el blend­ing. Methanol, he said, was used in count­less in­dus­tri­al and con­sumer prod­ucts and in­creas­ing­ly in en­er­gy.

Flo­ren ex­plained that the com­pa­ny would be us­ing a 3-5 per cent of blends in the ini­tial stages. He said some of the ben­e­fits to be de­rived from this ini­tia­tive in­clud­ed in­creased rev­enues to T&T from gaso­line ex­ports freed up by methanol blend­ed in­to T&T gaso­line pool and cheap­er, clean­er burn­ing and more ef­fi­cient gaso­line.

The prod­uct would al­so be used in ve­hi­cle en­gines, re­quir­ing no mod­i­fi­ca­tion or in­fra­struc­ture and the tran­si­tion to the con­sumer would be in­vis­i­ble and seam­less. How­ev­er, for fu­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties, Flo­ren said the in­tro­duc­tion of flex­i­ble fu­el ve­hi­cles (FFV's) which run on high­er methanol blends would of­fer sub­stan­tial fu­el cost sav­ings and free up gaso­line for ex­ports. Thus, Methanex an­nounced its spon­sor­ship of drag rac­er Shel­don Bisses­sar. Bisses­sar, a Trinidad na­tive, who al­so re­sides in the USA said he has been us­ing methanol to fu­el his ve­hi­cle for the past six years out of 23 years of drag rac­ing. He said this was the be­gin­ning of his world ti­tles. Bisses­sar said with his 5,000 horse­pow­er en­gine, gaso­line could not com­pete with methanol to give him the pow­er he re­quired. He is al­so the IHRA Top Drag­ster World Record hold­er, a ti­tle which he won in March this year.