The Unit­ed States Ex­port-Im­port (EX­IM) an­nounced yes­ter­day that it has grant­ed ap­proval for a US$526 mil­lion loan for a gas-to-en­er­gy project in Guyana.

This was dis­closed by the pres­i­dent and chair of the US Ex­im Bank, Re­ta Jo Lewis, in a tele­phone call to Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali.

The bank made the de­ci­sion dur­ing a meet­ing held ear­ly yes­ter­day, hav­ing com­plet­ed the 30-day con­gres­sion­al no­tice pe­ri­od.

The gas-to-en­er­gy project is slat­ed to de­liv­er 300MW of pow­er to the grid when com­plet­ed, ex­pand­ing the sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty, cut­ting the car­bon foot­print per kilo­watt hour, and re­duc­ing en­er­gy costs to con­sumers by 50 per cent.

Ali thanked Lewis and her team for the ap­proval grant­ed and for the con­fi­dence shown in this gas-to-en­er­gy project in Guyana.

Ali al­so com­mend­ed the Guyana team at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, Min­istry of Fi­nance, Min­istry of Nat­ur­al Re­sources, and the Guyana Em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton, DC, whose work helped se­cure the out­come for the coun­try.

The Guyana gov­ern­ment said the Ex­port-Im­port Bank of the Unit­ed States, The US Ex­im Bank, ap­proved a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar loan for the project on No­vem­ber 29.

Fol­low­ing that ap­proval, Guyana’s ap­pli­ca­tion was sent to the US Con­gress for a manda­to­ry 30-day no­ti­fi­ca­tion pe­ri­od. Af­ter that, the ap­pli­ca­tion was re­turned to the Ex­im Bank’s board for fi­nal ap­proval.

Ini­tial­ly, Guyana was seek­ing US$646 mil­lion to ad­vance works on the project, but it will on­ly ac­cess about US$500 mil­lion, which will fa­cil­i­tate ex­ports from the Unit­ed States.

At a news con­fer­ence last month, Guyanese vice pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo said the loan pro­vides retroac­tive fi­nanc­ing, cov­er­ing fi­nan­cial ex­pen­di­tures by the coun­try since the project’s com­mence­ment.

Up to then, Guyana had spent an es­ti­mat­ed US$400 mil­lion of its own re­sources on the project, which in­cludes the lay­ing of a 200-kilo­me­tre pipeline that will trans­port gas from the Liza Des­tiny and the Liza Uni­ty Float­ing Pro­duc­tion fields on­shore at the West Coast De­mer­ara fa­cil­i­ty.

The pipeline will con­tin­ue for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 225 kilo­me­tres to the Nat­ur­al Gas Liq­uid (NGL) plant, that is to be con­struct­ed in Wales.

Up­on com­ple­tion, the gas-to-en­er­gy project will have sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the coun­try’s econ­o­my, at­tract­ing sus­tain­able in­vest­ments across var­i­ous sec­tors and cre­at­ing nu­mer­ous job op­por­tu­ni­ties.

No­tably, en­er­gy costs are ex­pect­ed to be slashed by 50 per cent, al­low­ing Guyanese to en­joy af­ford­able and sta­ble elec­tric­i­ty.

The gov­ern­ment has part­nered with oil gi­ant Exxon­Mo­bil to de­vel­op the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture and fa­cil­i­ties to trans­port and process the gas for pow­er gen­er­a­tion and oth­er ap­pli­ca­tions. (CMC)