Business
Friday, June 28, 2013CASTRIES, St Lucia – St Lucia will seek to advance arrangements to access Venezuelan oil under the PetroCaribe initiative when Prime Minister Kenny Anthony visits Nicaragua today.Anthony told reporters Wednesday that there were no grounds for speculation that the island may have abandoned efforts to get oil on concessionary terms from Venezuela.Under PetroCaribe, Caribbean countries benefit from preferential rates on crude oil, refined products, and LPG or its energy equivalent, from Venezuela. The payment arrangement allows for purchase of oil on market value for 40 per cent up front, within 90 days. The remainder of the payment can be made over a period of 25 years with one per cent interest, provided that oil prices are above US$40 per barrel.The oil pact was launched in 2005 and was aimed at strengthening the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America (ALBA). But there have been reports here that since the death of President Hugo Chavez in March, the PetroCaribe oil agreement appeared to be in limbo.Prime Minister Anthony said his visit to Nicaragua is intended to further St Lucia’s interest in the initiative to which it has become a signatory.“We will be meeting essentially to finalise legal arrangement underpinning Petro Caribe which require us to establish two companies.“One would be owned by the government of St Lucia that will conduct its business on the initiative and the other owned jointly with Venezuelan interests, will manage the resources that comes available through PetroCaribe.“So we are moving to put the institutional arrangements in place so that hopefully we can begin to operationalise our relationship and secure benefits from Petro Caribe,” Anthony added.St Lucia became the newest member of PetroCaribe against the backdrop of escalating cost of fuel and the adverse effects on the economy.The government has said that PetroCaribe benefits will be used to invest in social development programmes and the country’s social infrastructure, as has been done successfully in neighbouring Caribbean countries.Among the regional countries that signed on to the deal, Jamaica has stated that since the inception of the facility in 2005, the country has benefited to the tune of US$2.4 billion, and has paid back US$150 million.However, the CEO of Jamaica’s PetroCaribe Development Fund (PDF) said in April that the country was the only beneficiary which had insulated from the temptation to consume the benefits in current expenditure, and had invested it in a way to ensure that the country would be able to meet the payments when they become due.— CMCANTHONY…we are moving to put the institutional arrangements in place
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St Lucia seeking to take advantage of PetroCaribe
