KINGSTON – The Ja­maica gov­ern­ment says en­er­gy di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, with in­creased use of re­new­able so­lu­tions, is a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty in or­der to achieve sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth.

“Our en­er­gy-sec­tor plan fo­cus­es on the cre­ation of a sec­tor that pro­vides af­ford­able and ac­ces­si­ble en­er­gy sup­plies with long-term en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, con­tributes to in­ter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive­ness through the pro­duc­tive sec­tors of the econ­o­my and im­proves the qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens,” Fi­nance and the Pub­lic Ser­vice Min­is­ter Au­d­ley Shaw told del­e­gates at­tend­ing the Nat­ur­al Gas Con­fer­ence, which end­ed last Fri­day.

Ja­maica’s Na­tion­al En­er­gy Pol­i­cy of 2009-2030 ad­dress­es the is­land needs for a se­cured, di­ver­si­fied and suf­fi­cient sup­ply of en­er­gy, which will in turn sup­port long-term eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment as well as en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Shaw told del­e­gates that the plans are “strate­gic, dy­nam­ic and adapt­able to the ever-shift­ing scope of glob­al en­er­gy de­mands”.

The three-day con­fer­ence was held un­der the theme ‘New Hori­zons: The De­vel­op­ment of a Nat­ur­al Gas Sec­tor in Ja­maica – Prospects and Chal­lenges’, and was joint­ly host­ed by the Of­fice of Util­i­ties Reg­u­la­tion (OUR) and the Pe­tro­le­um Cor­po­ra­tion of Ja­maica.

It sought to fos­ter greater un­der­stand­ing of the im­pli­ca­tions of the in­tro­duc­tion of liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) to the Ja­maican mar­ket­place, with par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on the an­tic­i­pat­ed eco­nom­ic im­pact, com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties, gov­er­nance and reg­u­la­tion.

Ear­li­er, Sci­ence, En­er­gy and Tech­nol­o­gy Min­is­ter, Dr An­drew Wheat­ley, urged lo­cal ser­vice providers to take ad­van­tage of op­por­tu­ni­ties that will emerge from Ja­maica be­ing po­si­tioned as the re­gion­al hub for nat­ur­al gas.

He told the con­fer­ence that the An­drew Hol­ness gov­ern­ment wants Ja­maica to be­come the re­gion­al hub for nat­ur­al gas and ef­forts are un­der­way to bring it to fruition.

Wheat­ley said as a non-oil-pro­duc­ing coun­try and a de­vel­op­ing econ­o­my, suc­ces­sive Ja­maican gov­ern­ments have long recog­nised the ne­ces­si­ty of a re­li­able and sus­tain­able en­er­gy sup­ply.

“His­tor­i­cal­ly, our en­er­gy pro­file has been char­ac­terised by an overde­pen­dence on im­port­ed fos­sil fu­el. On av­er­age, we need 20.4 mil­lion bar­rels of oil, an­nu­al­ly, which can cost the coun­try as much as J$2 bil­lion (One Ja­maica dol­lar=US$0.008 cents) de­pend­ing on mar­ket prices. In fact, Ja­maica’s na­tion­al oil bill ac­counts for our largest out­flow of for­eign ex­change, and it con­tin­u­al­ly ex­ceeds our to­tal an­nu­al ex­port earn­ings”

He said that while the oil mar­ket has been rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble over the last 18 months, “we know that the volatil­i­ty of oil prices can dri­ve up de­mand for for­eign ex­change and trig­ger in­fla­tion, which can re­sult in the de­val­u­a­tion of Ja­maican cur­ren­cy and the ero­sion of our pur­chas­ing pow­er. (CMC)