Petroleum World

We ensure that as we develop aluminum that a certain amount of it is kept in the domestic market. We ensure now that there will be no primary production of any commodity in this country and all of it exported; and incidentally having said that may I say that the arrangement with Alcoa also includes that. There will be no Alcoa smelter unless Alcoa... commits to significant downstream production. The day of primary production by itself in T&T is gone forever. We have one train we have one pot line of aluminium at Alutrint and we talking about a second one, but all of it so far is on the domestic market. The opportunities that emerge for domestic investment are great and I will like to urge the private sector not to get involved in the negativity that has consumed so many of us as we ponder our developments in the sector and nationally but to see the opportunities. They are there, and the Government is creating the environment and ensuring that the opportunities are there we ask you to take advantage of them. Sadly, in the construction sector we made the announcement years ago 100,000 houses committed to rapid development and so on, but we still find that the private sector has been reluctant to make the investment so we still have a shortage of concrete on the market. We still have a shortage of cement in the entire Caribbean and so on and so on. There are many opportunities that are there we call on the private sector to involve itself and to increase the local content, the local content, of our energy development. As we move forward and as we develop we are going to have to ensure that there is a greater private sector development in the industry. The energy incidentally sector is the largest sector in the Caribbean, and therefore it is private sector development not just locally but private sector development of the region. At home we must have a new gas utilisation policy, in respect of, we have already enunciated an element of that in respect of electricity production we have made it clear that natural gas ...Read More