NGC opens gas for manufacturers

This will be of particular significance in the age of advancing globalisation and with it the around the corner elimination of protective tariff barriers, including Caricom’s Common External Tariff arrangement. In this context the NGC-TTMA agreement must be viewed as both timely and welcomed, what with the increasing challenges being posed, for example, by low cost products from China, not only to this country’s goods in the international market place, but in the regional market and in our home market as well. Caricom is Trinidad and Tobago’s second largest export market after the United States.

Meanwhile every initiative which will contribute to the reduction of the landed cost of our exports; distribution, wholesale and, eventually, shelf price of Trinidad and Tobago produced goods and services should be seen as of critical importance to the country’s economic and social development.

National Gas Company president, Frank Looklin, who signed the agreement on behalf of NGC, has pointed out that NGC was planning new distribution lines for several of TT’s industrial estates, including, Diamond Vale, Gulf City, Waller Field Industrial Park and Otaheite Park. This is all part of the NGC’s expansion of its distribution network over the next three years. In turn, as an additional incentive NGC is connecting its LIC clientele to its network on a cost of service basis in which the gas company pays for the main distribution line.

At present, the LIC sector consumes an average of 1.1 percent of NGC’s daily production, but this is expected to grow. In the meantime, the NGC president remains convinced that natural gas will become, increasingly, the fuel of choice for small industrial and commercial businesses. The hoped-for result is the creation of new industries and the expansion of existing plants and with this an increase in employment opportunities and a greater turnaround of money within the economy.

The reduction of the price of gas to light industry users is merely one of several strategies which will have to be developed if Trinidad and Tobago produced goods are to become increasingly competitive and save off the many challenges with which globalisation will confront us.

NGC clearly recognises that for this country to have balanced overall growth there must be, in addition to expanded use of natural gas by large energy based industries, an equally expanded export of gas products, including liquified natural gas and an increase in the use of low cost gas by light industries. By affording light industries the opportunity to access gas at even lower prices than currently exist, more businesses are likely to take the bait.