Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

T&T's first en­er­gy port, which was of­fi­cial­ly opened yes­ter­day at Point Ga­le­o­ta, Guayagua­yare, ad­vances gov­ern­ment's plans to form a re­gion­al link with en­er­gy com­pa­nies in Suri­name, Guyana and north Brazil. So said En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine who added that US$85 mil­lion port was opened to fa­cil­i­tate south-south co-op­er­a­tion, an ini­tia­tive rec­om­mend­ed by Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship 2010 man­i­festo.

Port of Ga­le­o­ta com­pris­es 1.2 kilo­me­tres of new ac­cess road, an en­er­gy port with five berths and eight hectares of back­land with 78.6 me­tres dredge depth.Ram­nar­ine said con­struc­tion of the sec­ond phase of the port will be­gin next year at a cost of $110 mil­lion once de­tailed de­signs are com­plet­ed.

"It will ac­com­mo­date an ad­di­tion­al sev­en berths which will en­able T&T to par­tic­i­pate in lo­gis­tics ac­tiv­i­ty in the wider Caribbean re­gion," the min­is­ter said. He added that it has al­ready be­come a "ded­i­cat­ed berth for the T&T Coast Guard" and will ben­e­fit en­er­gy com­pa­nies.

"Nine­ty per cent of nat­ur­al gas is be­ing pro­duced in the east coast. Right now many com­pa­nies have their base in Ch­aguara­mas, so they have to sail around the is­land to get to their rigs. This port will re­duce the amount of time it will take to get on their rigs and plat­forms and so re­duce the cost and make the en­tire east coast en­er­gy sec­tor more com­pet­i­tive," he said.

"The port will fa­cil­i­tate the ef­fi­cien­cy of up­stream op­er­a­tors as well as fa­cil­i­tate our com­pa­nies to do busi­ness in Suri­name, Guyana and North Brazil."Ram­nar­ine said Ga­le­o­ta was the first port to be opened in T&T in 17 years.Ma­yaro MP Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters said 80 per cent of the labour for con­struc­tion of the fa­cil­i­ty came from the Guayagua­yare re­gion but when the project start­ed "dis­rup­tive el­e­ments" tried to stymie the work.

"This is the on­ly en­er­gy port in T&T and I am glad that these dis­rup­tive el­e­ments did not get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­rupt this project. I want to say to those peo­ple that they must qual­i­fy them­selves and then come to look for work," Pe­ters said.Na­tion­al En­er­gy chair­man Roop Chan Chadeesingh said the South Amer­i­can main­land had vast po­ten­tial for T&T's en­er­gy in­dus­tries.

"The Guyana/Suri­name basin is con­sid­ered to be one of the re­gion's emerg­ing en­er­gy mar­kets. As part of the Na­tion­al En­er­gy's man­date to pro­mote T&T, a del­e­ga­tion re­cent­ly vis­it­ed Suri­name for dis­cus­sions on ar­eas of co-op­er­a­tion in the de­vel­op­ment of their min­ing, en­er­gy and pe­tro­le­um in­dus­tries," he said.Chadeesingh said Suri­name's ex­trac­tive in­dus­tries are di­verse, un­ex­ploit­ed and full of po­ten­tial for in­vestors.

"It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that NE's re­cent mis­sion to Suri­name will serve as a spring board for fu­ture part­ner­ships and in­ter­ven­tions with stake­hold­ers in their en­er­gy in­dus­try and that port will be in­te­gral to some of those ini­tia­tives."He said four up­stream op­er­a­tors are al­ready us­ing the port fa­cil­i­ties–bpTT, BHP Bil­li­ton, Trin­i­ty Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion and Rep­sol.Pres­i­dent of Na­tion­al En­er­gy Dr Ver­non Pal­too said the port will gen­er­ate rev­enue and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy for up­stream ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion op­er­a­tors.