Local company, Gaico Construction last week signed an agreement with Grand Canal Industrial Estates Inc (GCIE) to begin an in-river structures and dredging project for the building of the Berbice Deep Water Port
“We have signed a contract and are in the process of mobilizing to begin work in another month’s time…one of the important things with this project, and that we are very upbeat about, is that we want to recruit a lot of people from the Berbice area to work on it,” Director and Chief Executive Officer of Gaico Construction, Komal Singh told Stabroek News yesterday.
While he would not go into the financial details of the project, Singh said that the first phase of the project “exceeds US$6m”. It is estimated to take about six months to complete.
Notice of the project was contained in an advertisement in the Guyana Chronicle yesterday which stated that Grand Canal Industrial Estates Inc had begun construction of in-river structures and dredging operations at its Berbice Deep Water Port.
GCIE had acquired a lease from government for 54.96 acres of the Berbice River front lands on August 10th 2012 for a period of 50 years.
A presentation on the project stated that the company envisions that the port will service oil and gas exploration and production, agricultural export, containerized export, cruise ship docking and regional shipping, among other services.
The company said that following a revision of the design of its wharf and trestle in the Berbice River, it was moving forward with the construction and dredging operations which launches the next phase of construction of its deep-water port project in Region six.
It said that GCIE has already expended some US$22 million on the project, which is being built on 30 acres of land adjacent to the north of Crab Island, on the eastern boundary of the Berbice River.
The deep water port facility is estimated to cost a total of US$80 million, according to CGX.
Ten acres of the plot has been set aside as a living laboratory for the study of mangrove habitats in coexistence with commercial port operations, according to the advertisement.
Gaico construction and General Services Inc. was selected for this project, it said, following a bidding process that evaluated that company as the lowest bidder.
“The in- river construction will begin with the 160 feet access trestle, which is being built from the shoreline westwards into the Berbice River. The wharf will then be built perpendicular to the trestle and parallel to the eastern bank of the river,” the project outlines.
Bramfield
CGX Resources Inc., a subsidiary of CGX Energy, Inc. owns and operates a 16 acres logistics yard located at Bramfield along the Corentyne Highway, some 3.2 km from the GCIE Deep Water port site.
This logistics yard facility will be used as storage for tubulars, specialty offshore materials and chemicals for the oil and gas industry, as well as agricultural and general cargo service and operations of the deep-water port.
In August of this year, government put CGX on notice to stick to its promised September timeline for a plan.
“We already had CGX relinquishing some of their (oil exploration) blocks recently. So CGX had a development plan that included the building of facilities; land filling and so on. What they have done is give us some assurances, when they relinquished the land, that by the end of September we must have a developed plan from them, as to how they will move forward,” President Irfaan Ali had told Stabroek News in late August.
Ali said that government will be “Holding to that timeframe, of course; that is why they had to relinquish (the blocks). We are holding them to those timelines.”
The warning to the company came even as the United Arab Emirates’ Abu Dhabi Ports (ADP) was continuing compiling technical information on a deep water facility at Berbice and government had received a proposal from a group of locals.
CGX which boasts of working in Guyana since 1997 has said that it envisaged a deep water port in Berbice since 2010.
The company’s Execu-tive Chairman Suresh Narine has said that the river has one of the deepest natural channels in the country and that was a major advantage with selecting the location.
“All the country’s rivers are gigantic sedimentation systems and those sedimentation systems are depositing our highlands into the Atlantic Ocean. This is very common of most of the major river systems in South America… force throws all of that sediment onto the western banks of the river resulting in all of the channels in this country being along the eastern bank (of the rivers),” he said.
Narine had signalled that the port would have been operationalized by the end of this year, but it was only in February that he informed that works would have begun soon.
When this newspaper visited the area in March of this year, a vast swathe of mangroves had been cleared from the eastern bank of the Berbice River adjacent to Crab Island to facilitate the development and construction of Guyana’s first deep water port.
Preparatory works had been progressing at the location and aerial images that were commissioned showed land filling was underway.
The advertisement yesterday said that Gaico has constructed an access bridge and the facility from the main Corentyne highway as an access road and it is built to American Association of Highway and Transportation Offi-cials Standards.
The company has also constructed concrete drains and driveways for residents living along the roadway and paved the roadway for convenience of residents. Solar street lights are expected to be installed there later this month, as well as in the 10-acre quayside laydown yard that has been completed.
The laydown yard was constructed to a five tons per square metre capacity and the company has also completed about 1600 feet of rip-rap flood protection at the site.
“All construction has been conducted by local contractors and testing by local and expatriate engineering firms have verified that these works have met or exceeded the international standards set by the company, the ad notes.
