Energy Chamber: All’s not lost with Angelin project

Chief Executive Officer of the chamber Dr. Dax Driver said while it would change from project to project, the platform construction would amount to about ten to 20 percent of the total cost.

He said a typical upstream project such as bpTT’s Juniper was a US$2 billion project so ten percent of that would give an idea of the total cost of the platform fabrication.

He said, however, a large portion of that sum would go into the purchasing of steel, meaning that not all the money would have gone into the community. He said the loss to the community would be the wages associated with the fabrication of the platform and payments to suppliers such as transport contractors and providers of other ancillary services needed in the putting together of the platform.

He said the gas from the project would become available in 2019 just at the time when production is going to begin to fall from the Juniper project which comes on stream at the end of this year. He said the gas from the Angelin project would fill in some of the declines from the Juniper project and the Sercan project being undertaken by EOG Resources is already producing gas.

Driver said while these new streams will not increase the supply of gas in any significant way above the current levels of production, it will stabilise production levels for another few years.

The chamber said “all responsible stakeholders must be disappointed by the decision not to construct the Angelin platform in La Brea.

However, this decision has been driven by the need to ensure that natural gas is available here by early 2019. There are clear concerns that any interruptions to project delivery, whether due to labour unrest or other factors, would have serious implications for bpTT, the National Gas Company and the downstream processors and users of natural gas. This in turn would have serious implications for the overall national economy.” It said the decision highlights the urgent need for this country to improve productivity, noting that within the energy-related construction sector, many companies report that productivity levels have dropped over recent years as a result of high rates of absenteeism and protests. It said that at the same time, demands for wage increases have continued, meaning that companies have become less competitive compared to companies operating in the United States, Mexico and elsewhere. According to the chamber, this reality highlights the need for serious reforms to the country’s industrial relations framework and improvements to its work ethic and productivity.