WITH a $1B investment into increasing its supply of fuel in Guyana, RUBIS on Wednesday commissioned a 30,000-barrel diesel storage tank and four 60,000 LPG Storage Tanks at their service station at Ramsburg, Providence. 

Gracing the event with his presence was Prime Minister, Mr Samuel Hinds, who, as Minister responsible for Energy, welcomed RUBIS’ investment in Guyana’s energy sector, especially considering the current fuel shortage which, he said, has occurred over the last year.
The prime minister said the issue has not escaped the attention of Cabinet which in the coming days will facilitate a meeting with the Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA) Dr. Mahender Sharma and major figures in Guyana’s fuel industry.
The high- level meeting will focus on the concern of the reliability of suppliers, and refineries. PM Hinds hinted to geographical locations as being one of the greater concerns for efficiency in fuel supply.
“We are very committed to assuring that we maintain reliable supplies,” according to RUBIS Guyana Inc. Chief Executive Officer, Mauricio Nicholls, who further assured: “increasing our storage as we have done is a very important part of that.”
Making its name in the Guyana market in April 2011, the RUBIS CEO said the increased storage capacity of the Ramsburg, Providence facility is only part of the large investments made by the company over its three years in this country.
After acquiring all rights of the TEXACO brand, Nicholls said that his company had invested close to US$8M, equal to $1.6B, in the substantial years of its entry to the Guyana market. Not only has the company rebranded all of its service stations, but it similarly rebranded its LPG brand to the now popular RUBIGas.
For his part, Nichols, a Mechanical Engineer with a Masters of Business Administration (MBA), acknowledged that supply reliability has been and continues to be a challenge for the industry, but while the company idolised safety and reliable supply as their operational values, “refineries [which] supply us with refined products are not as reliable as we would desire.”
Nicholls, who boasts 31 years in the fuel industry with Exxon, TEXACO and Chevron, the recognition of other factors which either govern, or influence reliability of the supplier. To this end, he cited “operational, mechanical, maintenance issues or labour relations and industrial action.”
“The reliability of the refineries that supply us,” he said, “are not exactly what we would like but we have to live with them… we are not involved in their operations so we have to live with that.”
RUBIS is a France-based international company founded in 1990. The company acquired the Texaco assets in the eastern Caribbean in 2001 across Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Guyana.
While recognising that there are some constraints to Government’s ability to invest, Nicholls used the opportunity to call on the Guyanese authorities present to aid in the further development of a market that reflects reduced challenges which could increase the reliability of supply.
“An idea is to build a new bridge which would allow our vessels to come under the bridge so that we wouldn’t have to wait for the bridge to open,” again noted that while such a project would be expensive, he said: “It is up to the Government to decide whether there is available funding for it.”
He cautioned strongly however that “these would contribute to making [supply] more reliable. The regional extent of RUBIS’s operations includes 200 service stations in 14 English-speaking countries. The company today operates 11 storage terminals including one in Guyana.