The use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as opposed to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) will negate the use of expensive pipelines and may spell cost savings of millions of US dollars a year for a Caribbean country like Jamaica.
Speaking at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Campus last week, Vice President (Commercial) of Sea NG Corporation Ian Mallory outlined how CNG works and its considerable cost benefits.
"For countries like Jamaica that don't have large economies of scale it does not make sense to spend lots of money to transform gas into a liquid state and then spend US$300 million to US$400 million turning it back to its natural state.
Rather we compress the gas at source, probably in Trinidad, Colombia and Venezuela on a ship and then sail to wherever the client may be. The client then takes it from the ship and transports it to its plant. This can be extremely cost effective for both the bauxite industry and the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS)," said Mallory.
According to a senior executive at the Jamaica Bauxite Institute (JBI) the bauxite industry ships in 9.8 million barrels a year, accounting for 37 per cent of Jamaica's fuel oil imports. JPS imports 6.5 million barrels a year, which represents 25 per cent of fuel oil, imports.
