BARBADIANS ARE REDUCING their use of energy, says Simpson Oil Limited (SOL) group general manager for the Southern Caribbean, Roger Bryan.

He made the observation Thursday after a Press conference announcing the private sector partnering of the Marine Governance in the Eastern Caribbean (MarGov) Project, at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.

"We have noticed that as the price goes up radically, as the prices
in Barbados would
change, there is a slight reduction in usage.

"Obviously that has an impact because people are doing the sensible thing; they drive less and they conserve," he said.

As a matter of fact, Bryan noted that if prices continued to increase, "we would see some reduction in usage through our service stations".

However, he noted that such a behavioural change "tends to [level] out after a few months where people start to get back into their habits"
and urged stongly
against doing this.

"The price of oil is getting into unprecedented territory with the levels
of increase . . . .,"
he commented.

"We would certainly encourage Barbadians to really look carefully at how they use energy and to conserve because it does seem, particularly in months like December when demand in the United States goes up, that the price will continue to increase."

Bryan said the marketers' market, including the three that operate locally – SOL, Texaco Caribbean, and Esso Standard Oil (Caribbean) – have fixed margins, "and that will not change, so we will not benefit at all if the price
of the product goes up.

"Government will obviously have to look
at how they change the prices in this market because Barbados
is a completely
regulated market.

"And typically
what happens is that Government increases their price and we keep the same margin, so the cost of doing business increases and obviously that has an impact on our bottom line," he said.

When asked if SOL planned on asking Government to deregulate the fixed price, Bryan responded: "We would
look at that carefully
as we go ahead, and as things change we would address the issue
of margin with the Government as we
need to." (TM)