Dr. Bethel, who has cabinet responsibility for regulation of private energy suppliers and natural gas exploration, insisted that those regulations once completed and in place, will be “of the highest order.”
In the wake of recent remarks by Prime Minister Perry Christie that he had instructed the Attorney General and Ministers Bethel and Leslie Miller to “ensure that the manner in which the industry will be regulated, the extent to which it will be regulated, is in fact now prepared,” Dr. Bethel expected that the completed regulations would attract only companies prepared to meet the highest standards.
“We wish to give assurance to the public that the regulations and standards that we are imposing are going to be of the highest order, and that they should have every confidence that the government will continue to protect the interests of The Bahamas and the Bahamian people,” Dr. Bethel said.
Dr. Bethel told the Journal that The Bahamas would be benchmarking its regulations against countries that have regasification facilities.
“And I think that those with the highest standards include those in the United States,” Dr. Bethel said. “We have already done the due diligence there; we have been working with the US authorities with respect to those types of regulations, both with FERC (US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) and with the state of Florida.”
Dr. Bethel explained that since the recent visit of Secretary of Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Colleen Castille, his team has been working with Ms. Castilleﾒs department on “various aspects of the regulations.”
In terms of other collaborators on regulating the LNG industry, Dr. Bethel pointed out that there were only a limited number of countries with regasification facilities.
Among those countries with LNG regasification facilities are Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Indonesia, Qatar, Australia, Trinidad and the US.
Prime Minister Christie said he was “well aware that some companies would reserve the option to say that they cannot exist in such a highly regulated environment.”
Asked whether the prime minister was suggesting that the stringency of the LNG regulations would discourage some companies from approaching the Bahamian government about LNG operations in The Bahamas, Dr. Bethel said only that the regulations would be “of the highest order,” and that “companies prepared to meet the highest standards” would be welcome.
Attorney General Allyson Maynard-Gibson declined to comment, and Minister Miller was on vacation and unavailable for comment.
The government is negotiating a heads of agreement with the Virginia-based energy giant AES Corporation, a multinational power conglomerate with more than 700 subsidiaries that is still being sued by the Dominican government for destruction of the environment at two locations in the Dominican Republic.
AES is proposing to construct an LNG regasification plant at Ocean Cay in the Northern Bahamas, and run an LNG pipeline to Florida to help meet that stateﾒs growing energy demands.
The Cat Cay Club, made up of residents of nearby Cat Cay, remains deeply concerned that negotiations are proceeding, as do some of the countryﾒs environmental advocates.
By: Quincy Parker, The Bahama Journal
