As The End Approaches For Oil & Gas, Trinidad Looks For Alternatives

EDIT

"Now running out of oil and dependent on natural gas that may last only another generation, Trinidad is taking steps to diversify its economy and break its long cycle of boom and bust. When Prime Minister Patrick Manning penned a deal with Jamaica this month to trade cut-rate liquefied natural gas, or LNG, for alumina, the move signaled what analysts see as a promising approach to development: converting a finite resource into sustainable industries.

The agreement, which assures a steady supply of the key ingredient for producing aluminum, means Trinidad can move ahead with plans to build a smelter. The project would employ at least 3,000 during construction and create 700 jobs in production, chipping away at a 10% unemployment rate and perhaps at the nation's rampant crime, committed in part by idle and disenfranchised citizens. "LNG might be producing 70% , but it only employs about 200 people. KFC employs more people here," said Richard Dawe, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of the West Indies.

The aluminum plant is just one of more than a dozen industrial projects on the drawing board to exact the most long-term benefit from Trinidad's rich reserves of natural gas, which until now has been extracted and sold, mostly to the United States, for quick profit.

EDIT

It's not that exporting LNG hasn't benefited the country. Signs of prosperity abound, from the housing estates springing up along wide highways to the sleek new office towers in Port of Spain rising from a forest of cranes. Trinidad's economy grew more than 13% last year and is predicted to expand an additional 7% this year — and maintain that rate for the foreseeable future, said Ronald Ramkissoon, chief economist for Republic Bank Ltd. in Trinidad. But proven reserves of natural gas will last only 24 years at the currently planned rate of extraction. Industry stewards are in a race against time to create a more viable and diverse economy for the nation's 1.3 million people before the commodity runs out. "One of the approaches to a wasting asset is that you save some part of that income for the day when you may not have it anymore," said Ramkissoon. He noted that the government had established a stabilization fund, through which oil and gas revenues above a certain level are invested for future generations."

EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-gas28nov28,1,3375976.story?coll=la-news-a_section