00:00The Vice President for Commercial at the National Gas Company Limited, Verlier Kwan-V spoke
00:06about the fact that all of Trinidad and Tobago's electricity supply is derived from natural
00:11gas.
00:12And when you look at the natural gas that we provide to power, it represents about 10
00:18percent, 10 to 13 percent of all natural gas goes for power.
00:23What that equates to, that equates to about five to six ammonia plants.
00:27And if ammonia price right now is close to 500 U.S. a ton, and if you take the ammonia
00:34plant of 500,000 metric tons and you convert that, that's 250 million U.S. dollars per
00:41revenue you could potentially earn.
00:44The power stations receive their supply of natural gas from the state-owned national
00:48gas company, the NGC, which receives that gas supply from upstream companies such as
00:55BP and Shell.
00:57The NGC's Vice President spoke during the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and
01:02Commerce's post-budget meeting at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Port of Spain.
01:08The Energy Chamber previously said a reduction in natural gas for the supply of electricity
01:13would allow for more gas to be available for foreign exchange earning downstream export
01:18products.
01:19The NGC Vice President spoke about the issue in the context of climate change.
01:24So if we can reduce through energy conservation – because one of the challenges of climate
01:29change we're seeing is higher usage, higher demand for power.
01:33So what we're seeing is that power consumption, you know, coming out of COVID and now with
01:40climate change we're seeing consumption increasing, which is equivalent to one ammonia
01:44plant.
01:45And given that we don't have increased gas production, what that means is that gas that
01:51is going for power came from the petrochemical plants.
01:55So we're shorting the petrochemical plants, we're shorting getting foreign exchange because
01:59of increased power demand.
02:02The NGC Vice President had a message for all who use electricity.
02:05But there are areas that I think everybody in this room, companies can do that can help
02:10with that.
02:11And things like, simple things like in terms of your air conditioning units, you know,
02:15instead of running it at 18 degrees, if you bring it down to 22, 23 degrees, you know,
02:22if you look at changing out the LEDs.
02:24So certain things in the budget I think were there that we all can do.
02:27You know, we can look at looking at super escrows, look at avenues to convert to renewables.
02:33In his 2025 budget statement in the Parliament on Monday, Finance Minister Colm Imbert said
02:38the local economy is now growing and advised the population to be careful and spend the
02:43money wisely and live within our means until 2027 when the cross-border gas is expected
02:50to flow.
02:51Jule Brown, TV6 News.
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