PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is urg­ing for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion among Cari­com states in a bid to ad­dress en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns with­in the re­gion.

In his ad­dress at the day two of the Guyana En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and Sup­ply Chain Ex­po yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter Young said such an ef­fort was the best an­swer to ex­ter­nal pres­sures be­ing placed on the re­gion to sud­den­ly ad­dress cli­mate change and re­new­able en­er­gy de­mands now be­ing asked of re­gion.

"It is go­ing to cost US$14 bil­lion to move the Caribbean Cari­com is­land states to re­new­ables. Put quite sim­ply, that is not re­al­is­tic, be­cause when you look at the fi­nan­cial fea­si­bil­i­ty and the bank­a­bil­i­ty of chang­ing the grids, mov­ing to re­new­ables, it sim­ply isn't there on pop­u­la­tion size, on is­land space size, etc," said Young, who ex­plained the pooled re­sources of Cari­com could pro­vide a so­lu­tion.

"We hold part of the so­lu­tion in this dilem­ma for the rest of Cari­com, and it is in­cum­bent up­on us to push and to fight hard to be able to utilise the re­sources in our re­gion to first of all, pro­vide that en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty for the re­gion and then al­so to of­fer op­tions out­side of the re­gion," said Young,

"Out of the 640,000 plus bar­rels of oil a day that are be­ing pro­duced by Guyanese nat­ur­al re­sources owned by the peo­ple of Guyana, how much of that is ac­tu­al­ly be­ing utilised for the en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty of the re­gion?

"Our abil­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go to pro­duce more LNG be­cause we have ex­ist­ing ca­pac­i­ty at our the plants and what we're look­ing for is ac­cess to proven re­serves of gas that can be and must be an im­por­tant part of the so­lu­tion for the oth­er Cari­com is­lands as they move to chang­ing out and up­dat­ing their en­er­gy pro­duc­tion and their elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion be­cause they can use LNG and use nat­ur­al gas for the pro­duc­tion of their elec­tric­i­ty. It's more ef­fi­cient. It is part of the tran­si­tion."

Young in par­tic­u­lar urged Guyana to used Trinidad and To­ba­go's fa­cil­i­ties to kick­start their in­dus­try as op­posed to de­lay­ing it while wait­ing for its fa­cil­i­ties to come on­line and re­ceive buy-in from for­eign in­vestors.

The En­er­gy Min­is­ter said, "If we were to col­lab­o­rate, for ex­am­ple, right there in Trinidad there is ex­ist­ing plug in, send you gas re­sources and you re­ceive the re­turn im­me­di­ate­ly. No wait, no mora­to­ri­um no need for in­cen­tives, an im­me­di­ate re­turn on your nat­ur­al re­sources that you then use for the in­fra­struc­ture of your coun­tries as a re­turn for the peo­ple of your re­spec­tive coun­tries."

He added, "My mes­sage is about us tak­ing con­trol of our own des­tiny. We are so­phis­ti­cat­ed enough."