Sutherland: Rebrand BNOC

THE Barbados National Oil Company (BNOC) should be rebranded to reflect a renewable energy focus.

St. George South Member of Parliament, Dwight Sutherland, made this clear as he spoke in the Lower House yesterday on the debate on the National Petroleum Corporation (Amendment) Bill, 2017.

The Opposition member said that there had been a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy worldwide and Barbados must have a facility which pushed solar and wind energy.

“BNOC has missed the boat and needs to be rebranded as a renewable energy company. I have said in this Chamber before that there are oil-rich nations Saudi Arabia, Qatar and all of these nations that are leaving their crude oil in the ground and are focusing more on renewable energy, but we are spending so much foreign exchange on oil importation and we have the facility to build out the renewable energy capability and capacity in this country and we are sitting down on it for the past nine years.

“The BNOC should by now be the leader in renewable energy and I make no apologies in saying this as opposed to the (Barbados) Light and Power. There is no reason why you should not have a 10-20 megawatt wind farm by BNOC and utilising local investors to buy into the plant led by BNOC. Foreign investment could have been 20 per cent, local investment 50 per cent and utilities could be 30 per cent. That is where the Barbados National Oil Company should be focusing… Seeing themselves as an energy company and taking the lead. You should be leading the utility company, not the utility company leading you,” he asserted.

Earlier in his presentation, Sutherland also questioned the drop in crude oil production in the island, noting that in the early 2000s, around 1 000 barrels were being produced a day, but that figure had dropped below 700 barrels since 2014. (JMB)