Guyana to benefit from new Venezuela oil facility
Guyana Chronicle
July 16, 2004
VENEZUELA – the world’s fifth largest oil exporter – is poised to become the primary player in Caribbean energy integration efforts with the announcement of a new initiative, PetroCaribe, part of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s ambitious PetroAmerica’s project.
The PetroCaribe initiative was announced at a meeting last Saturday hosted by Venezuela’s Minister of Energy and Mines, Mr. Rafael Ramirez and attended by the energy ministers of 13 Caribbean countries, including Guyana.
Guyana was represented by Prime Minister Sam Hinds, who is responsible for Public Communications and Works, and Energy.
The meeting – a brain storming session among energy ministers from Cuba, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua, Barbuda, The Bahamas, Dominica, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts-Nevis, Suriname and Grenada – lays the political foundation for increased integration of regional oil industries.
There were several issues on the agenda of what was dubbed `The First Meeting of Energy Ministers of the Caribbean’, including rising oil prices, the effect these have on the average consumer, and the potential for a cheaper and sustainable regional oil supply through increased integration.
According to a release from the Office of the Prime Minister, PetroCaribe would, under the concept proposed at the meeting, be a Venezuelan company able to “call on the support as required, of all the resources and facilities of Venezuela” and which has the mandate to cooperate with Caribbean governments – either individually or en bloc – in order to better supply Caribbean countries with their petroleum and other energy needs.
Venezuelan oil industry website, Petroleumworld.com, quotes Ramirez as saying at the meeting that the Petrocaribe initiative is designed to check “speculative factors and sometimes obscene profit margins that are placed on the [oil] products.”
Under the current Caracas Accord, Venezuela supplies oil to Caribbean countries through a favourable payment plan but petroleum products prices have been subject to the whims of suppliers.
The next meeting of energy ministers to discuss PetroCaribe is slated for August 25-26 and will be held in Jamaica.
And in related news, Trinidad and Tobago is taking steps to ease the burden of rising oil prices off of fellow Caribbean Community members by placing a price cap of US$30 a barrel on oil sold to members of the upcoming Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME).
This is according to T & T Minister of Industry and Commerce, Ken Valley, who made the announcement at an investment meeting in New York on Tuesday. (RUEL JOHNSON)