WESTERN BUREAU- Commerce, Science and Technology Minister Philip Paulwell will tomorrow put a price tag on the damage caused by last week’s explosion at the Petrojam oil refinery and tell the country’s Parliament how much it will cost to get oil from abroad.

“I will be making a full statement to Parliament on Tuesday, which will indicate the full extent of the damage,” he told reporters at the Jamaica Computer Society Awards

Ceremony in Montego Bay. “(The report to the House) will indicate the loss we are going to suffer, it will indicate increased foreign exchange that we will have to expend to secure additional supplies, it will give the full picture.”

The cause of the explosion has apparently still not been ascertained.

“We might not be able, at that time, to tell you what caused the damage but we will certainly have a firm grasp as to what it will take to replace it,” Paulwell said.

Last week, the Marcus Garvey Drive, Kingston, refinery was forced to shut down after an explosion put the plant out of commission. The reaction was immediate, with long lines at the gas pumps.

The Jamaican Government has long preached conservation, while exploring alternative energy sources. According to Paulwell, one such venture, the Wigton Wind Farm in Central Manchester, has attracted many investors.

In the first few months of next year, he said, the tendering will begin to licence players who have an interest in wind energy.

“We have seen a number of investors who have expressed not only an interest in the purchase of this wind farm (Wigton) from the government to see to its expansion, but to look at other locations such as Palisadoes and elsewhere,” the minister said.

“I believe that we are going to have to use a tendering system to allocate licensing to those persons who are showing interests in wind, and that will be done early next year.”

While he did not disclose the names of the potential investors, he described them all as “established players” in the energy sector.

“As you know, wind energy is just now taking off so they would not be very long in the business, but certainly in the energy sector they would have some tremendous experience,” Minister Paulwell said.

The US$25-million Wigton Wind Farm has 23 wind turbines, each towering 160 feet above the ground. The construction and commissioning phase of the project, which was expected to take 12 months, was actually completed in seven months, adding 20.7 megawatts of power to the national grid to bring total installed capacity to 800 megawatts.