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thats WTI ,not Brent crude
Redman wrote:I agree...but ...diversify into what?
What are the viable options that we can act on?
Habit7 wrote:We already in light manufacturing. The last admin wanted to start aluminum smelting to increase manufacturing to heavy manufacturing and that was shut down.
Our efforts into ship building has been stymied. Most nations with shipbuilding have a comparable military maritime operation to help bolster it. We cancelled our OPV and not only did the 2nd largest navy in the americas bought them, they got the contract to make them too.
Trinidad really don't know what they want.
Habit7 wrote:We already in light manufacturing. The last admin wanted to start aluminum smelting to increase manufacturing to heavy manufacturing and that was shut down.
Our efforts into ship building has been stymied. Most nations with shipbuilding have a comparable military maritime operation to help bolster it. We cancelled our OPV and not only did the 2nd largest navy in the americas bought them, they got the contract to make them too.
Trinidad really don't know what they want.
Dizzy28 wrote:Habit7 wrote:We already in light manufacturing. The last admin wanted to start aluminum smelting to increase manufacturing to heavy manufacturing and that was shut down.
Our efforts into ship building has been stymied. Most nations with shipbuilding have a comparable military maritime operation to help bolster it. We cancelled our OPV and not only did the 2nd largest navy in the americas bought them, they got the contract to make them too.
Trinidad really don't know what they want.
I wouldn't have focused too much on ship building as much as I would with ship repair. Ship building especially larger crafts are traditionally done in the countries with rich maritime histories and a history of ship building e.g. UK, South Korea, Australia, France etc. The factors to replicate to become efficient would be a bit too much for Trinidad in the medium term (IMO).
Ship repairs would be much easier to enter and could prove to be as lucrative if not more so.
The Bahamas for example dry docks those Royal Caribbean cruise ships and their labour costs are so much more than ours. We can offer a good proposition in ship repair within the Caribbean.
Habit7 wrote:Yeah shipbuilding doesnt have to be huge liners. Craft as short as 30m could be done and the have a high turn over. Many in the Caribbean could utilise it for fishing, pleasure and transport and we can get the indigenous edge. Plus with all the business we give to Austral we could franchise some ship building for this hemisphere.
Habit7 wrote:The health and environment hindrances for smelter were just as moot as the same person's claim on the highway. Bahrain is 5x smaller than Trinidad and has one of the world's largest aluminium smelters and it is run with above world standard environmental friendliness.
If we concerned about health and environment then we wouldnt load methanol in Trinidad. If one methanol ship explodes it would take out the Point Fortin in 5 secs.
zoom rader wrote: Plus where were they going to ship the toxic waste products since other countries refuse to accept it. This question was never answered by PNM .
Habit7 wrote:zoom rader wrote: Plus where were they going to ship the toxic waste products since other countries refuse to accept it. This question was never answered by PNM .
Waste export
The EMA said it was also satisfied that the company had made arrangements to export hazardous waste material to a facility in Arkansas, in the United States.
McIntosh told reporters that it had taken more than a year to grant the CEC despite the Patrick Manning Government's apparent rush to get the project off the ground.
Energy Minister Dr. Lenny Saith said last week that construction of the plant would begin within a month.
The U.S.-based aluminum company, Alcoa, has also submitted a request for clearance for a similar plant. McIntosh said that matter was still before EMA.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2007 ... ness9.html
Habit7 wrote:How ignorance killed the smelter
By David Renwick
Story Created: Sep 22, 2010 at 12:36 AM ECT
Story Updated: Sep 22, 2010 at 12:36 AM ECT
I was a little disappointed, no, amend that, VERY disappointed, that Energy and Energy Affairs Minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan obviously failed – assuming, that is, if she tried at all – to convince her Cabinet colleagues to ignore the People's Partnership misguided election campaign anti-aluminium smelter rhetoric and press ahead with the project.
But a pathetic combination of lack of vision, ignorance and emotion prevailed and Finance Minister Winston Dookeran delivered the coup de grace in his 2010-2011 budget address on September 8.
Since the political likelihood is that the People's National Movement (PNM), even under its assertive new leader Dr Keith Rowley, will not regain office for at least another ten years, there is little chance of this unwise decision being reversed.
After a period of 36 years, therefore, the idea of aluminium smelting as an essential ingredient in Trinidad and Tobago's move towards developed country status – a goal by the way, both Jamaica and Barbados have borrowed from us – seems to have hit the buffers.
How sad and, indeed, how hypocritical, since both ministers Seepersad-Bachan and Dookeran were members in good standing of the United National Congress (UNC) in 1998 when, as the government, that party signed an agreement with Norway's renowned aluminium producer, Norsk Hydro, for the construction of a 237,000 tonne a year smelter, to be sited at the Point Lisas industrial estate.
Neither disassociated themselves from the policy at the time and presumably both concurred with the statement by their then party leader and Prime Minister, the Honourable Basdeo Panday, that: "The country's quest for an aluminium smelter is finally within our grasp," adding, pointedly, that he was "determined to move the children of sugar workers out of the plantation economy and seasonal employment, into the world of regular work and permanent jobs in a modern industrial sector".
If today's children of those earlier sugar workers get the impression that Ms Seepersad-Bachan and Dookeran care somewhat less about moving them into "the world of regular work and permanent jobs in a modern industrial economy" than Panday did, who could blame them?
Ms Seepersad-Bachan is doubly culpable in this matter because she is one of the few members – if not, the only member – in a Cabinet dominated by lawyers, to have a technical background (in her case, electrical engineering).
She is assumed, therefore, to be in a better position to be able to grasp the significance of the role heavy industry, and the materials it produces, plays in the creation of an industrial society, the only path to full economic development.
Ask China, which is industrialising at a breakneck pace and putting itself way ahead of India in this regard, the latter having chosen services as its medium of development.
Thanks to its frenetic pace of industrialisation, China has now achieved the position of being the world's second largest economy in only a few decades.
The energy and energy affairs minister, specifically mentioned "metals and associated downstream industries" in her list of projects for "the prioritisation and allocation of natural gas", as she put it, when presenting the results of the latest Ryder Scott audit of the country's natural gas reserves in July.
Aluminium is a metal, right?
She did not, repeat not, specify "steel" in her announcement.
The fact that aluminium, one of the key building blocks of industrialisation, has now been unceremoniously dismissed from consideration, on the basis, according to the budget speech, of "much public criticism", "health and environmental risk," "viability" and "concern about the optimal use of gas," (all of which have been already effectively discredited by real experts) it seems clear to me that the People's Partnership government is bent on retarding Trinidad and Tobago's economic development, rather than enhancing it.
Forget developed country status by 2020, as the PNM administration had envisaged.
This desirable objective has seemingly been postponed, perhaps to Jamaica's date of 2030, perhaps to never.
It brings tears to one's eyes that this new government can apparently see only the small picture and not the big one, as the PNM was clearly capable of doing.
Mr Dookeran made great play in his budget with small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), outsourcing, culture-based activities, the fashion industry, tourism, even free trade zones.
All of these are fine but they almost all rest on the essential element of a low-paid workforce.
No country has ever truly developed or become richer (Trinidad and Tobago is already rich by international standards) in the absence of industrialisation, both heavy and light.
We already enjoy much of the latter; the former is what now counts.
On another budgetary matter, not directly related to energy (and I hope my readers will forgive me for raising it, though there are undoubtedly many energy industry people involved) - why did Dookeran choose to disrupt the on-going activities relating to the eventual settlement of the debt owed to depositors in CLICO's former short-term investment funds?
He has completely up-ended the efforts that were successfully being made, under the supervision of the Central Bank and the former finance minister, to repay all the money owed over a modest period of time, on the basis of resources already presumably advanced by the government to the company and on its own efforts at putting its various businesses back in order.
There are people I know who hold signed statements by CLICO, setting out a schedule of repayments of their outstanding balances, with a token amount of interest attached.
These signed pledges may very well be the basis of future court cases, demanding that they be fulfilled.
The Dookeran alternative of a small lumpsum payment and settlement over 20 years, by which time almost all of the creditors will be dead is patently absurd.
I expect the People's Partnership to lose significant support over this ill-advised act.
David Renwick was awarded the Hummingbird Medal (gold) in 2008 for the development of energy journalism in Trinidad and Tobago.
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/business ... 01184.html
zoom rader wrote:Habit7 wrote:zoom rader wrote: Plus where were they going to ship the toxic waste products since other countries refuse to accept it. This question was never answered by PNM .
Waste export
The EMA said it was also satisfied that the company had made arrangements to export hazardous waste material to a facility in Arkansas, in the United States.
McIntosh told reporters that it had taken more than a year to grant the CEC despite the Patrick Manning Government's apparent rush to get the project off the ground.
Energy Minister Dr. Lenny Saith said last week that construction of the plant would begin within a month.
The U.S.-based aluminum company, Alcoa, has also submitted a request for clearance for a similar plant. McIntosh said that matter was still before EMA.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2007 ... ness9.html
EMA at that time was a puppet of the PNM. This is the same EMA that cooked up bogus reports on Biche high school.
Biche high in full operations without any problems at present .
The smelter company never got clearance to ship to US via international waters. Making arrangements does not mean you got clearance from the US.
Habit7 wrote:zoom rader wrote:Habit7 wrote:zoom rader wrote: Plus where were they going to ship the toxic waste products since other countries refuse to accept it. This question was never answered by PNM .
Waste export
The EMA said it was also satisfied that the company had made arrangements to export hazardous waste material to a facility in Arkansas, in the United States.
McIntosh told reporters that it had taken more than a year to grant the CEC despite the Patrick Manning Government's apparent rush to get the project off the ground.
Energy Minister Dr. Lenny Saith said last week that construction of the plant would begin within a month.
The U.S.-based aluminum company, Alcoa, has also submitted a request for clearance for a similar plant. McIntosh said that matter was still before EMA.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2007 ... ness9.html
EMA at that time was a puppet of the PNM. This is the same EMA that cooked up bogus reports on Biche high school.
Biche high in full operations without any problems at present .
The smelter company never got clearance to ship to US via international waters. Making arrangements does not mean you got clearance from the US.
First you said PNM never answer the question of waste disposal, then when show you PNM approved solution you jump to another canard. That EMA is the same EMA as today which the govt is underfunding and according to the govt commissioned Armstrong Report produced a bogus CEC for the highway.
You need to keep quiet and ban yuh belly because low oil prices mean less production in North Sea. So hold on tight in T&T and wave yuh baliser in Sando East even with a crapaud in a tie as your MP because you going to be seat #21+ to form the PNM govt.
Habit7 wrote:zoom rader wrote:Habit7 wrote:zoom rader wrote: Plus where were they going to ship the toxic waste products since other countries refuse to accept it. This question was never answered by PNM .
Waste export
The EMA said it was also satisfied that the company had made arrangements to export hazardous waste material to a facility in Arkansas, in the United States.
McIntosh told reporters that it had taken more than a year to grant the CEC despite the Patrick Manning Government's apparent rush to get the project off the ground.
Energy Minister Dr. Lenny Saith said last week that construction of the plant would begin within a month.
The U.S.-based aluminum company, Alcoa, has also submitted a request for clearance for a similar plant. McIntosh said that matter was still before EMA.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2007 ... ness9.html
EMA at that time was a puppet of the PNM. This is the same EMA that cooked up bogus reports on Biche high school.
Biche high in full operations without any problems at present .
The smelter company never got clearance to ship to US via international waters. Making arrangements does not mean you got clearance from the US.
First you said PNM never answer the question of waste disposal, then when show you PNM approved solution you jump to another canard. That EMA is the same EMA as today which the govt is underfunding and according to the govt commissioned Armstrong Report produced a bogus CEC for the highway.
You need to keep quiet and ban yuh belly because low oil prices mean less production in North Sea. So hold on tight in T&T and wave yuh baliser in Sando East even with a crapaud in a tie as your MP because you going to be seat #21+ to form the PNM govt.
orangefox wrote:At $50 a barrel TT will dive into a recession. At $9 a depression.
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