KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – St. Kitts-Nevis Prime Minister, Dr. Terrance Drew, Tuesday said that the twin-island Federation is soon to embark upon geothermal drilling after his administration had agreed with the opposition on the need for a united approach towards developing the project.
Addressing the seventh sitting of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Assembly, being held under the theme “Strengthening Regional Unity in a Shifting Global Order,” Prime Minister Drew said that Nevis has enriched deposits of geothermal and is “one of the largest in the Caribbean.
“It’s very accessible based on all the studies. Five C’s (Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre) said that Nevis has the most accessible geothermal in the whole region. That is their study, even though Dominica has gone ahead, which, of course, we applaud and look to.
“But because of the Federal system of St. Kitts and Nevis, no one government would ever have the opportunity to leverage that unless there is cooperation between government and opposition…in the country.”
Drew told the Assembly that he sat with the Opposition Leader in the Twin Island Federation, “and he and I decided, this resource, we will not have any dispute, we will approach it as a single entity.
“And we have done that. Look at the results that we have gotten. We have reached the point now where we are about to open…drilling for geothermal, something that could not have been done for decades because of political strife”.
Prime Minister Drew said that his message to the Assembly, which opposition legislators are attending, is that “there are things we will always disagree, we can disagree on 95.55 percent, but there has to be one or two major things that we must agree on”.
He said that such a policy can advance not only the individual countries in the sub-regional grouping but also the region as a whole.
“So, my message is, let us continue to work to bring greater unification, which will result in benefits to all of us, and I want to use St. Kitts-Nevis as an example,” he told the Assembly, a regional parliament consisting of representative parliamentarians from all OECS member states, both government and opposition.
Earlier this year, the government announced that it had taken a “monumental step towards energy independence” and secured the full financing required to launch the Federation’s first geothermal energy project.
It said that this landmark achievement propels the Federation closer to its goal of becoming a Sustainable Island State, reducing reliance on fossil fuels and slashing energy costs for citizens.
The government stated that the geothermal energy project aligns with its ongoing efforts to promote renewable energy, including its 50-megawatt solar farm initiative. With energy costs poised to drop significantly, St. Kitts & Nevis is set to attract new industries, stimulate job creation, and enhance national resilience to global energy shocks.
The OECS comprises the islands of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat, Anguilla, and the British Virgin Islands.
and then 