By: Candia Dames

19 December 2005



After reportedly becoming frustrated by years of waiting for the government to make a decision on its liquefied natural gas proposal for The Bahamas, an energy company that had been pushing a plan for Grand Bahama has decided to pursue other options.

International press reports over the weekend said Suez (formally Tractebel) plans to build an LNG terminal in the ocean about 10 miles off Fort Lauderdale.

The company reportedly plans to import natural gas from Trinidad, Algeria and Egypt and would carry out its operation strictly in U.S. territory and not in The Bahamas as it had been proposing.

However, The Bahama Journal learnt on Sunday that Suez has not completely written off its plans for The Bahamas as the Grand Bahama Port Authority remains hopeful that the government would eventually approve the company’s proposal for Grand Bahama.

It has been no secret that Port officials are high on the plan as they seek to foster continued economic diversification in the nation’s second largest economy.

But The Bahamas Environment Science and Technology Commission (BEST) determined that the proposal to build an LNG facility in the Freeport Harbour was unacceptable, which left the company in search of another location on Grand Bahama for its project.

The Port had even recommended to the government that the cruise ship port be relocated on the island to accommodate the LNG project, but Minister of Trade and Industry Leslie Miller said recently that no final decision had been made in this regard.

Former Port Co-chairman Sir Albert Miller told The Bahama Journal that the Port was still interested in the plan and he viewed it as the best solution to the concerns about an LNG plant in the harbour.

But it now appears that plan may never materialize unless the government moves swiftly to provide the necessary approvals to Suez.

The Sun Sentinel in Florida described Suez’s new LNG plan as an "outgrowth" of a previous plan for an undersea pipeline to bring in natural gas from The Bahamas.

The report said, "Suez was one of three companies to pursue such a plan, but the Bahamian government hasn’t given final approval to any of them. Tired of waiting, Suez is proposing an alternative that would place the project entirely in U.S. jurisdiction."

The other two companies waiting for the government to announce a decision on their LNG proposals are the AES Corporation and El Paso Corporation.

The Sentinel also said Suez, based in Paris, expects to file an application with the Coast Guard in the next few months to build a complex of buoys, anchors, cables and pipes to allow tankers to unload natural gas at sea.

The gas would go via pipeline to power plants, most likely in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, the report said.

Having applied more than four years ago under the previous administration, the energy companies have been waiting for the Christie Administration to make a decision on the matter.

An official at one of the companies told The Bahama Journal that the wait has been a frustrating one and no company can wait many years for a government to make up its mind.

The officials said his company had already spent millions of dollars doing preparation work for the project.

Some officials within the various companies have reportedly become more frustrated by the fact that Prime Minister Perry Christie and Minister Miller have been setting timelines for LNG approvals which never materialize.

For instance, at the beginning of this year, Prime Minister Christie said on a local talk show that his government would approve the AES project by the end of January 2005. But again, no such decision has been made.

That project calls for a plant to be built on tiny Ocean Cay near Cat Cay and Bimini in the northern Bahamas and for an LNG pipeline to be laid to South Florida to meet that state’s growing demand for energy.

While in Grand Bahama for the Ginn development signing week before last, the prime minister explained to The Bahama Journal that he was concerned that having LNG projects in The Bahamas would spoil this country’s image as a premier tourist destination, but he said circumstances had led the government to decide that it would approve the AES project "shortly".

"I think the new revelations of energy problems and the need for The Bahamas to take advantage of its proximity to the United States of America have given us a different perspective and a different value to that process," he told The Journal.

"Provided – as we have had – environmental impact assessments say that it is safe and that [there would be] very, very, very minimal implications to the environment then we, I believe, would go ahead in the very near future."

As reported in the Journal last week, Minister Miller said he wanted to steer clear of timelines, but he too said that the government is very likely to "soon" approve an LNG project.

"I think there’s a strong, strong possibility that very shortly the government will be giving the final approval for the AES Corporation to construct their terminal at Ocean Cay, off Bimini," Minister Miller said.