Island Power and Energy

All oil, gas, propane is shipped into Bonaire. There are no refineries, no pipelines just tank storage. A liter of gas cost about $1.04.

In the past year, Bonaire has had to shift its oil supplier.  It seems that the ABC Islands ( Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao) were trade partners with Venezuela. Since the US put an embargo on oil from Venezuela, and the Venezuelan oil industry was taken over by the government and subsequently failed, it has left the ABC's without a consistent supply and supplier.  Venezuela failed to make the improvements on oil storage facilities and ship oil as contracted.  The Dutch have honored the US embargo since we are allies, much to Venezuela's chagrin.  Even Iranian oil tankers that have tried to bring and export oil to and from Venezuela have been turned back by both the US and Dutch Navy.

Curacao, the economic hub for the ABC's has all the goodies...refineries, oil companies, tank facilities and public-private partnerships for producing and distributing oil.  So Bonaire works with Curacao to get its supply of oil and gas through a private-public partnership. 

The government-owned Water and Energy Company Bonaire (WEB) that runs the desalinization plant, also has wind power and biodiesel from algae.  In 2010, the world's largest hybrid wind-diesel power plant went online with12 wind turbines with a total wind power capacity of 11 MW.  The wind turbines contribute about 33% to the required electricity demand and can peak to cover 90%. WEB does not buy back solar power from home use.  We have seen some solar panels on homes but not a lot.  It seems that WEB wants to make money and discourages solar.

We have not figured out what electricity or water will cost yet.  We also don't know when they bill us.  So we will have to figure that out this month.

We are so putting together a "survive the power outages" collection of flashlights and canned goods.