ENERGY WORLD GETS DOWN TO BUSINESS, REALLY NOW ?

I decided for this artcile I was use the headline and reported by the Sunday Observer of April 13, 2014.

Credits : Jamaica Observer

Energy World International’s Managing Director and Chairman Stewart Elliot points to where the Liquefied Natural Gas storage tank will be located when the company begins construction of its electricity generating project soon. Elliot was on a tour of the Cane River area of East Rural St Andrew yesterday (Sat April 12, 2014).

 

Commonsenseja of course always have another angle and asked the obvious question, what is wrong with this picture.

Mr Elliott appears to be point upwards towards hilly terrain and having a knowledge of the Cane River area of Bull Bay, this is hilly terrain.

For those who are wondering what is wrong with this picture let’s examine a number of issues are it relates to the original design of this project.

When this project first came on about, the Jamaica Public Service Company’s, JPSCo, was to build this 360MW plant at old harbour. When JPS dropped out the project was sent to tender , with the understanding that the project would have been a single plant and this would have been located at old harbour , close to where JPS already has extensive transmission grid in place.

Just two weeks ago the Gleaner broke news that EWI was now considering not one, but two separate plants, one in Montego Bay and the other at Bull Bay, East Rural St Andrew, which is where Elliott , Paulwell and Crawford are noted in the picture above.

The fact that all these guys are at this sight appears to confirm the Gleaner article unless the Energy Minister would like to explain to the country, why we should think anything other than this given he is on tour with the EWI Chairman in this location.

At that time I wrote and expressed my concerns on this proposed change, which was only being made available to the public through a Gleaner source.

See article here

http://wp.me/pvIkx-1RG

 

Now here is document on which a lot of time and effort was spent in relation to LNG storage and logistics involved and the rational for the location of this LNG storage and regasification unit.

Excerpts from that document.

LNG will be regasified at a planned LNG Storage and Regasification Terminal (SRT) which will be located within the Portland Bight, St. Catherine Parish, on the south coast of Jamaica. This location was selected due to its proximity to the initial customers in both the power and alumina/bauxite industries.

Where we are now is very very far away from the original location as was specified by the LNG consultant to the Government of Jamaica.

The document continued.
The SRT will be designed with minimum technical complexity and keeping safety in view considering meteorological and metocean data at site. The Terminal will be designed with zero flaring during normal operation including loading, holding and regasification modes. Only proven equipment and units will be used, considering high standards for reliability and availability, and with minimum downtime for maintenance.

The preferred location for the SRT is a near-shore concept, close to Port Esquivel. The berthing facilities will provide for industry standard hard unloading arms, expansion drums, purging facility and lifting equipment, independent power supply etc. and mooring facilities including breasting and mooring dolphins of a design and placement consistent with best practices and the target overall terminal availability of 99.5% per annum. The terminal will be designed with a sparing philosophy that can accommodate the target availability (this will be demonstrated by a terminal RAM analysis conducted by the Supplier). LNG vessels will not be required or permitted to perform vessel-to-vessel transfers through flexible hoses.

So the LNG storage site was supposed to be close to the sea and at Port Esquivel to provide power LNG to the bauxite industry.  Maybe we can take this as clear sign that the bauxite plants are not going to be open any time soon, right Phillip.

The location from which Mr Elliott and the team appears to be point to is on the other side of the main rd leading leading to St Thomas ie on the Northern side of the roadway, which would be further from the sea, than one would like, given the LNG would have been expected to be delivered by sea (barges).

The area is a residential community and has the cane river falls, which is a attraction of some sorts to visitors to this area.

We definitely would like for the OUR and or the Minister to tell the public, what is really going on here. There is obviously a change in the scope of the project and the citizen of Jamaica has a right to know what is going on here.

This area of Bull Bay is along a fault line that runs all the way from Gordon town to Port Royal and commonsenseja wonders if this was taken into consideration, when this new work scope was arrived it.

Commonsenseja would also like to know given the high limestone content in this area , the flooding issues and the fault line that exist, what safety measures are going to be put in place to protect the Cane River and as as the residents of Bull Bay should a spill occur at this site.

We would also like to know if a new EIA was done on this site for storage of LNG as well as power Generation  and if this was so, will the OUR make this information public.

These are questions that needs to be answered.

Here is the original documents in relation to the LNG project for which we spent millions of dollars.

RFP-2011-L002-LNG-Floating-Storage-Regas-Terminal-AMENDED-15-Sept-2011