risky business

Rubis Caribbean is prepared to invest in and rebuild or redevelop their Spring Garden terminal in order to import their own fuels.

 

Chief Executive Officer of Rubis Caribbean, Mauricio Nicholls, said that they are of the firm belief that having two import fuels terminals in Barbados would be “greatly beneficial” to the country going forward. 

 

He spoke to the media yesterday morning in the conference room of Rubis’ International Trading Centre office, Warrens, St. Michael, where he noted that across the Caribbean, it is common practice for every oil company to have their own import fuel terminal, but in Barbados there is only one terminal on which all the companies rely. 

 

His comments came as he reflected on the proposed sale of the Barbados National Terminal Company Limited (BNTCL) to their competitor SOL.

 

“We don’t think that is the greatest thing for Barbados because really and truly, when you have only one terminal, if anything happens to that terminal you put the whole supply of the country at risk. And for this and other reasons, companies prefer to have their own and most countries in the Caribbean have two or more import fuel depots. There is also the practice in the Caribbean of 

having jointly owned fuel depots,” he stated.

 

Nicholls went on to explain that allowing Barbados to have at least two fuel import terminals would go a long way in ensuring reliability of supply.

 

“What happens if there is only one terminal in the country; what happens if the terminal goes up in flames? There is no alternative; there is no other location to which you can bring those 

fuels. 

 

“We can say no, we have fire protection equipment, we have all these things and that’s never going to happen; but all the terminals that went up in flames talked like that… Or let’s say for instance that you have a breach in the pipeline, the pipeline is damaged so you cannot bring the product by pipeline from the vessel to the terminal because the pipeline is damaged, what happens then, the country runs out of fuel?”

 

With that in mind, he said having two or more terminals offer the necessary redundancy, so that if one fails there is a backup. As such, Nicholls said their Spring Garden terminal could serve this role. He said that if they go this route, it would not only be an additional investment that Rubis would be making in Barbados, but would also mean additional employment opportunities, during and after construction. Nicholls said that to utilise that site, they would have to apply for planning permission to rebuild the storage tanks, and while they have discussed the idea with their principals in France, they have not put a cost to such an undertaking nor have they made a formal request to the authorities to pursue the work.

 

“As soon as we are granted that option, if we are granted that option we would be ready to start working on it immediately, to build it as quickly as possible. We would prefer to have all the approvals sent to have the facilities built before the sale of BNTCL to SOL goes through, because we really don’t want to rely on a terminal owned by a competitor for any period of time,” he indicated. (JRT)