Dr.
Vincent Adams
By
Luis Araujo
The Trinidad Guardian
PORT
SPAIN
Petroleumworld.com
02 19 06
The
Caribbean region is running out of time to address its current,
heavy reliance on oil and a leading US energy official believes
PetroCaribe may well signal a step backward in that regard.
In
an interview with Business Guardian in Puerto Rico where he
addressed Caribbean journalists and media leaders, Guyana-born
director of the facilities and materials reuse division of the
US Department of Energy, Dr Vincent Adams, warned that Caribbean
governments need to address the matter with greater urgency.
“You
have 30-40 years of oil left,” he said. “The Caribbean
is among those areas that will suffer the most when it runs
out (but) PetroCaribe is not the answer.”
The
former oil industry executive, who said he was not speaking
in his official capacity, said there was “a large deficit”
between what is produced and what is imported in the region
and that the developed world had already started exploring its
options.
Adams
referred to Venezuela—responsible for initiating the controversial
PetroCaribe oil initiative—which generates up to two-thirds
of its electricity from hydropower.
He
said there was no proper reason why Guyana continued to languish
from reliance on imported fuel when abundant hydro resources
existed in the mainland republic, his original homeland. Just
next door, in Suriname, the former Dutch colony extracts as
much as 75 per cent of its energy through hydroelectric technology.
The
senior Energy Department official said the Caricom did not seem
to be doing much to encourage members to pursue renewable sources
of energy and he said it was unfortunate that the Venezuela-led
PetroCaribe initiative was being described as some kind of solution.
Adams
told Business Guardian there were questions that needed to be
asked about the true benefits of PetroCaribe since beneficiary
countries will someday have to pay for every barrel of oil it
receives.
“It
concerns me,” he said, citing the fact that T&T will
be “hurt” over the short term and would need to
“re-align” itself in the area of petroleum exports.
He
said there were “political implications beyond oil issues”
behind the deal and that the people of the region need to ask
“what are the political implications of PetroCaribe?”
The
agreement has been endorsed by every Caricom country except
T&T and Barbados.
Signed
last July, the agreement seeks to “immediately create
PetroCaribe as a body aimed at facilitating the development
of energy policies and plans for the integration of the nations
of the Caribbean through the sovereign use of natural energy
resources to directly benefit their peoples.”
Adams
also suggested that while the current oil and gas windfall had
brought major benefits to the economy of T&T and the country
has “a lot of options,” people need to be reminded
the oil “will not last forever.”
He
declined specific comment on the plans to establish an energy-intensive
aluminium smelter in Trinidad saying only: “the experts
would have presumably done extensive studies to assess its feasibility
and its benefits.”
He
praised the country for exploring a wide range of downstream
energy-based industries but recommended that T&T keep its
eyes wide open to the fact that oil was a depleting resource
“and it will all be over some day.”
