The Tribune

By William Bardelmeier

On March 5, 2010, The Tribune reported that BEC had imported 9.5 million barrels of fuels in 2008. That would have been equivalent to 1.4 million tonnes if it had comprised 50 per cent heavy oil (Termed IFO 380) and 50 per cent light diesel.

With perhaps 3 per cent growth in consumption, fuel imports have probably grown to 1.57 million tonnes today. Theopen market price of heavy fuel in Texas today is $635 per tonne. The price of Light diesel fuel is $ 1,047.50 per tonne - a difference of $412.50 per tonne.

Heavy oil contains 18,500 BTU’s per pound. Thus 54 pounds would comprise onemillion BTU’s. Fifty-four pounds of fuel, priced at $635 per tonne, will cost $15.55 per million BTU’s. Natural gas today costs $3 per million BTU’s, and has recently been near $2.

Are you starting to sense a way to reduce the cost of electricity?

Many believe that all heavy fuels are polluting evils. Some are, some are not. Fuels with very, very low sulfur content and low heavy metals do exist, but if man spills them - and he likely will in due course - they can constitute an unhealthy long-term problem. Green is nice but it doesn’t come on the cheap,

I’m not sure what large engines BEC has, but I understand they date back to what were known as, or comparable to, the Sulzer RND series of 20 years ago. Such engines then offered a wonderful energy cost savings by burning about 0.36 pounds of fuel per horsepower hour, compared to a then-modern steam plant consuming 0.5 pounds per horsepower hour. A 30 per cent reduction in fuel to do the same work was good news at that time.

Press reports told us that our BEC experts attended an Orlando seminar recently, where they surely would have learned more details about the wonderful new heavy fuel engines coming along today. Engines that consume something in the order of 23 per cent less than heavy fuel engines of the 1990 era that I believe we now have.

Modern, tri-fuel engines designed to switch seamlessly and rapidly from heavy oil to very light, low sulfur oil and/or to natural gas (LNG) are now becoming available. The demand for such machines is driven by pending European standards that will forbid the use of fuels containing more than 1/10th per cent sulfur.

In retrospect, it’s rather sad that we didn’t let those LNG suitors build their costly cryogenic tanks. Their shareholders should be rejoicing today because gas from shale is changing the global gas market and they would be “white elephants” .

How sweet it would be to have those costly, redundant facilities available to store gas that we could purchase today in volume quantities at lower cost to supply our own electric plants (and maybe also store the Bahamian gas we may have available for sale one of these days).

Today we can have an opportunity to use less fuel, and cheaper fuel, that will create less emission damage. Let’s hope the heavy financing needed, and recently cited by Michael Moss, former executive chairman of BEC, can be achieved, even though other needed capital expenditures are soaking up available credit to an extent that seems to be raising Wall Street eyebrows.

Our pressing electrical problem seems to be that of improving the human inputs, and restoring a work ethic so we can enjoy reasonable electricity service costs and won’t have to eat our breakfasts or dinners in darkness as the Eastern End, particularly, has been doing. Mr D’Aguilar recently made some interesting public comments along that line. They deserve our full attention.