Carib
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Antigua
Petroleumworld.com
02 26 06
St.
John's Antigua:As a number of OECS countries have brgun capitalising
on the Petro Caribe initiative Antigua is making moves to tap
into the arrangement.
"We
spent a significant amount of time discussing the entire transportation
issue and given the volumes that are ordered by the various
territories in the OECS, logistically it just make sense for
us to coordinate our orders so that it becomes economically
viable to ship to the territories", Ambassador Underwood
said.
Ambassador
Underwood further noted that Antigua and Barbuda have a number
of steps to take to operationalize the arrangement. The government
has to continue the process of getting PDV Caribe Antigua and
Barbuda duly registered as a limited liability company. "We
have to take some further steps in terms of having the organization
meeting, formalizing the appointments of the directors then
proceeding to putting the necessary staffing in place so that
we can operationalize PetroCaribe", according to Ambassador
Underwood.
In
addition to formalizing the company and getting the personnel
in place Antigua and Barbuda needs to advance the negotiations
with Venezuela in terms of the purchase sales agreement and
in order to do this the coordination with the other territories
is important.
PetroCaribe
was brought into being with a multilateral agreement. Subsequent
to the signing of the multilateral, bilateral agreements were
executed and we are at the stage now where Venezuela is seeking
to have bilateral purchase sale agreements executed with each
participating territory.
At
the OECS meeting it was decided that the OECS should collaborate
and seek to have a single text for these purchase sales agreement
and so Antigua and Barbuda will be advancing along those lines,
she noted.\
