Government is pursuing discussions with the Barbados Light & Power (BL&P) about the possibility of using natural gas for power gener-ation, instead of using bunker fuel.
Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Energy, Senator Darcy Boyce, said it is believed that “if we can get Light and Power to go back to the plan to use natural gas, the volume at which we can import natural gas will be sufficiently large that we can bring down the cost of natural gas more towards what it would be if it were all local”.
Speaking in the Senate on the National Petroleum Corporation Amendment Bill 2017, yesterday, Senator Boyce said while natural gas is currently being bought in small quantities, “if we can buy a good bucketful, we would be able to get the price down”.
Senator Boyce said that while BL&P has been progressively moving forward in the area of renewable energy, it will take the company about 25 years to completely change to that platform.
“The issue is that they have got a plant that is there that has not yet been fully paid for. And if they were to change and do all renewable energy, they will have to pay for the new equipment for renewable energy, and they will also have to pay off for what is outstanding on the existing plant. So what you would have is what you would call ‘stranded assets’. So what you will do is you will try to bring in the renewable energy equipment and phase out the older equipment,” Senator Boyce said.
“But that old equipment can run, with some relatively minor modifications, on crude oil, or diesel, or it can run off natural gas.
“Now, we prefer to use natural gas because it is cleaner and if it helps us to bring down the cost of gas to the country, we would want to do that,” he added.
The Minister said that Government was waiting to sign off on an Inter-American Development Bank loan, which will substantially improve the natural gas network and expand the Micro LNG plant for industrial and commercial use in Barbados.
“That is what we are going to do for the future of the gas supply in the country. We will use it as a transition fuel for the Light and Power until they get to renewable energy 100 per cent, and also to bring down the cost of fuel,” he said.
Senator Boyce also stated that the possibility of the transportation sector using natural gas is also being looked at.
“The transportation sector uses gasoline and diesel and we believe that we can get some additional benefits by having some of them transition to using the natural gas, which is cleaner than the diesel and which usually gives the same kind of power.
“So we have to do some work on that now, so that we are able to look and see how feasible transitioning them to natural gas would be over a 15-year period,” he explained. (AH)