Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Kerrie Symmonds warned that mounting geopolitical tensions in the southern Caribbean make it imperative for Barbados to fast-track its transition away from fossil fuels, as the government presses ahead with legislation to consolidate national energy assets.
Symmonds was on Tuesday defending the government’s urgency in passing the Barbados National Energy Company (Transfer and Vesting of Assets) Bill, saying that global instability and mounting costs of imported fuel made it critical for the island to accelerate its transition away from fossil fuels.
In debate on the bill in the House of Assembly, Symmonds warned that ongoing tensions between Venezuela and the United States could have catastrophic implications for the Caribbean if conflict were to erupt, given the region’s long-standing dependence on petroleum imports and the significance of the Petrocaribe arrangement.
He said: “The reality is that we don’t have any control over those prices. If a shot were to go [off] 200 miles, 300 miles off the coast of Barbados, one shot, oil prices would go sky high. One shot off the coast of Venezuela. We have no control over these things; what we have control over is how we restructure our affairs.”
His remarks came against the backdrop of heightened military tensions in the southern Caribbean, where United States naval vessels have been stationed near Venezuelan waters. Any escalation could disrupt energy supply routes and destabilise the Petrocaribe framework through which several Caribbean nations have historically accessed oil on concessionary terms.
The former energy minister said the situation reinforced why Barbados must act decisively to secure its energy future. He drew attention to the volatile price environment that has burdened the economy for decades, citing recent figures from the Central Bank.
“The central bank governor did his half-year review in August 2025. And he pointed out that in the year 2024, for the first six months of the year, expenditure on the importation of petroleum products was $538.5 million.”
He noted that for the same period in 2025, the country’s fuel import bill stood at $262.5 million – an almost 50 per cent decline. However, he stressed that such fluctuations made effective policy planning nearly impossible.
“The wild fluctuations make policy planning unpredictable once we continue to be wedded to the fossil fuel regime. When I was energy minister in 2021, the Russian-Ukraine war started. It had nothing to do with us. Not a fellow in the Caribbean was consulted or involved. But approximately $400 million in importation costs for fossil fuel in 2020 became $1.2 billion in 2021. How do you plan? How does the planner, the government, which must execute policy across a range of sectors all driven by the use of electricity, be able to say that you’re planning sensibly and effectively?”
The senior minister argued that the only sustainable response was to “emancipate ourselves from the shackles of dependency on the international petroleum product market, where we have been connected to and wedded to from the time we were created as a country”.
He continued: “We cannot continue to be vulnerable to every geopolitical tremor or global energy crisis. The only sensible course is to take charge of our energy destiny.”
Explaining the broader purpose of the bill, Symmonds said it was part of the government’s wider effort to consolidate national energy assets, streamline investment, and accelerate the shift towards renewable technologies in both public and private transport.
“There are 110 000 vehicles on the roads of Barbados – privately owned motorcars and trucks – that also have to be transitioned. There’s discussion going on in the industry as we speak about all the various angles that can be taken in order to achieve this. And there is an investment plan.”
Highlighting the strides made in the public transport industry, he said the government had found 36 old diesel buses when it came to office, but now there were 89 electric buses operating across the island. He added that these were introduced over the past seven years to transform the service provided to commuters and that a further 35 buses were on the way.
The government was also exploring ways to assist privately owned public service vehicle operators in transitioning to hybrid and electric models. “The PSV operators, whether it is ZR or minibus, must also be transformed as well. It means therefore that government has to find the investment in order to assist many of those operators, if not all, in being able to source what may well have to be concessionary-type financing in order to change out that which they now have, and to bring in hybrids and electric so that we can continue to pull them off the reliance on imported fossil fuel, which is draining the economy of Barbados.” (SZB)
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