The Guyana gov­ern­ment says the gas-to-en­er­gy project be­ing de­vel­oped at Wales at the Es­se­qui­bo Is­lands-West De­mer­ara re­gion will go ahead de­spite protests by var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties and or­gan­i­sa­tions to halt its de­vel­op­ment.

“The gas-to-en­er­gy will be built. It is a com­mit­ment that we made and de­spite every at­tempt …to kill this project, it’s not go­ing to suc­ceed,” Vice Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo told a news con­fer­ence.

Jagdeo told re­porters that the gov­ern­ment re­mains con­fi­dent that the US$646 mil­lion loan be­ing sought from the US Ex­im Bank will be se­cured in the sec­ond quar­ter of this year, fur­ther ad­vanc­ing the en­er­gy project.

“We have a great work­ing re­la­tion­ship with the US Ex­Im Bank. We’ve had bi­par­ti­san sup­port on this loan. You think a few loonies … or the oth­ers who been try­ing to block this project; you think that the peo­ple who did an as­sess­ment of this project in the US are as stu­pid as they are,” he added.

The gov­ern­ment says when com­plet­ed, the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar project will sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the cost of elec­tric­i­ty by 50 per cent, there­by al­low­ing con­sumers to save ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$100 mil­lion on an an­nu­al ba­sis.

It will al­so trig­ger mas­sive eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion in the man­u­fac­tur­ing and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors which will in re­turn, cre­ate job op­por­tu­ni­ties and at­tract for­eign in­vest­ment while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ing a smooth tran­si­tion to­wards re­new­able en­er­gy.

In the 2024 bud­get, a GUY$80 bil­lion (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) has been al­lo­cat­ed to ad­vance the project, in­clud­ing trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion up­grades to off­take the pow­er.

The project will re­sult in a 200-kilo­me­tre pipeline bring­ing gas from the Liza Des­tiny and Liza Uni­ty Float­ing Pro­duc­tion fields on­shore. Up­on ar­rival at the West Coast De­mer­ara fa­cil­i­ty, the pipeline will con­tin­ue for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 kilo­me­tres to the Nat­ur­al Gas Liq­uid (NGL) plant to be con­struct­ed in Wales.

The gov­ern­ment has part­nered with Exxon­Mo­bil to de­vel­op the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture and fa­cil­i­ties to trans­port and process the gas for use in pow­er gen­er­a­tion and oth­er ap­pli­ca­tions.

The project is ex­pect­ed to have a life span of 25 years.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Feb 9, CMC – 

CMC/gt/ir/2024