WIOC for the moment can meet its demands

antiguasun.caribbeanads.com Natlie S. Fleming 03/19/2003

Edging on the brink of a war between the United States and Iraq, General Manager of the West Indies Oil Company Ltd. (WIOC) Fyfe Saddler said that his company for the moment, can meet its demands.

He further said that WIOC has an adequate supply in its reserve and consumers have no need to worry.

“We obviously cannot entirely control the world’s market on the supply and demand factor,” Saddler said.

“All we endeavour over the years we have been operating in Antigua, and will continue to do as one of our highest priorities, is to try to maintain security of supply to the people of Antigua, APUA, to the businesses that operate in Antigua and to each and every household,” he added.

“I think without doubt, so far we have succeeded in doing that 100 per cent and will endeavour to the extent of our abilities to be able to do that and I hope we can succeed,” the WIOC head said.

“I think if there is something that dramatically affects the world’s supply of oil products, which we are obviously seeing with some of the issues that we are confronted with in the imminent future, we cannot control that, but we will certainly make best our endeavour to ensure continuity of supply to Antigua & Barbuda,” he said.

With regard to alternative source of supply, in the event its main suppliers Venezuela and Europe fall short, Saddler said, “We have an international network of oil traders and we who are continuously seeking back up, secondary, and even tertiary supply sources in the event that supplies from the main sources such as Venezuela gets disrupted.”

“We hope that we are well equipped as anybody depending on global developments to be able to maintain the security of supply for oil products,” he said.

“We want to make sure whether it is fuel for vehicle, for cooking or its fuel oil that we supply to APUA for electricity generation that all of these product lines are fully supplied to ensure that there aren’t any outages, that tanks don’t dry up and electricity continues 24 hours, seven days per week,” he added.

As to whether there will be additional costs to consumers, Saddler said that is a decision to be taken by the government, but believes that with a looming war, prices to consumers, not only in Antigua & Barbuda but throughout the world will increase.

He wants consumers to adopt a number of energy saving techniques in the event of any higher energy prices.

“In terms of average business or household, clearly there are a number of things one can do to economise – whether it means using your air conditioning less or sharing lifts to and fro from work, and businesses to economise on consumption for electricity – all those things done collectively can have quite an impact on the overall demand factor and apart from responsibility within individual businesses – it stands for each and every individual both personally and in the workplace to do whatever they can to economise,” he said.

“The other thing that consumers can take some reassurance from is the fact that we have fairly large storage capabilities and we are endeavouring to hold as much cushioning stock as we can so if supply lines do get tight that we do have a buffer to achieve that,” Saddler said.