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BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Nov 11 2015 – The French engineering and services company, Teranov, has begun exploration exercises here indicating that the prospects for geothermal energy on St. Kitts are promising.
Five geoscientists are now here conducting feasibility studies with Teranov president Jacques Chouraki saying he remains optimistic of success as exploration takes place around Brimstone Hill, going to the top of Mount Liamigua.
“The initial results look pretty good but of course it’s too early to say what will be valuable…It’s a long process. We have decided to invest a lot of manpower in this project in order to speed up the process so that as quickly as possible the St. Kitts population will be able to know exactly if there are geothermal resources available or not,” Chouraki said.
In September, Public Infrastructure, Posts, Urban Development and Transport Minister, Ian Liburd signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Teranov, which includes a road map that can possibly see the production of geothermal energy in 2020.
Liburd said that the decision to start geothermal exploration on St. Kitts “was against the backdrop of having assumed office … we inherited a situation deriving from our fossil fuel imports in accordance with the PetroCaribe agreement.
“As a matter of fact, from 2007 to 2008, the government owes PetroCaribe or Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A (PDVSA) some US$22 million of which some seven million US dollars are due.
“Between 2008 and 2011, the government racked up a debt of some US$45 million owed to PDVSA. As we speak, St. Kitts Electricity Company Limited (SKELEC) owes PDVSA some US$16 million out of which six or seven million US dollars are current,” Liburd said.
Liburd said that fossil fuel costs are very exorbitant and that “if we are going to continue our development and if we are going to ensure economic growth” that the government must adopt a policy of renewable energy because “we are blessed with sunshine, we are blessed with wind and in the federation of two islands we have two volcanoes”.
Liburd said that although the development of geothermal on Nevis has already started “we believe it would be irresponsible of us as an administration not to establish whether we have a geothermal resource here on St. Kitts and if so determine how best to develop that resource”.
Minister Liburd also indicated that the Timothy Harris administration will be presenting the regulatory framework to Parliament with the tabling and first reading of the St. Christopher Electricity Act which is being amended to accommodate alternative energy, feeding tariffs, net billing, and solar, wind and geothermal energy “to speed up so to speak so we can address our new way going forward in terms of energy production in St. Kitts and Nevis”.
SKELEC chief executive officer, Cartwright Farrell, said that “one of the good things about geothermal is that it is base load energy that is indigenous to St. Kitts. It is down in our earth and we don’t have to import it and in this day and age when everybody is talking about climate change we are taking a very good step in moving forward towards our own climate change issues.”
