The Alliance For Change (AFC) has expressed deep concern over the state of the nation’s electricity sector in light of the administration’s recent announcement that the Wales gas-to-shore project won’t be ready until next year.
The concern was expressed by David Patterson, MP, and former Minister of Works, at yesterday’s AFC press conference on what it viewed as the sad state of the Guyana Power and Light’s (GPL) operations and electricity supply.
The party said that it should come as no surprise that the “ill-conceived” Wales Gas to Energy project has been delayed since as far as the party was concerned, “from the inception, this project was doomed to fail.” And to support this view, it pointed out that there were no studies, other than those undertaken by the coalition administration prior to 2019; the selection of the project site remains questionable; the economic viability of the project is untested, and in fact even the basis for the need for this project was flawed.
Patterson said that when the gas-to-energy project was launched “with much fanfare” in 2021, the PPP/C projected that the country’s power demand would be in excess of 405 megawatts (MW) by 2025, an increase of 145 per cent above the country’s existing generating capacity, this increase they claimed, was due to Guyana’s positive investment outlook.
Further, at the recently concluded Oil and Gas Conference, the government revised the country’s energy demand projection to 280 MW by 2025 a reduction of 124 MW or 30 per cent without any explanation. “This clearly demonstrates that basis for the Gas to Energy project was pure guesswork.”
The former Works minister then presented what he referred to as key facts. 1) In July 2020 the country’s available power generation was 165 MW with peak demand of 125 MW. 2) At the end of 2023, GPL power generation was 180 MW with a peak demand of 165 MW (a mere 15 MW increase in generation in 3 years). 3) The increase in generating capacity was entirely due to the commissioning of new generation sets procured under the coalition administration.
Therefore, he reasoned, if the PPP/C energy forecasts are to be believed, the country will require an additional 101 MW of new generating power to meet the 280 MW demand before the Wales Gas to Energy project ever comes online.
Based on this projection, Patterson suggested that the nation should be concerned with where and how these additional power generating sets will be acquired since it has already been seen that at the end of 2023, GPL procured 17 second-hand container sets for US$27 million. To date he said that only 5 of the 17 are operational, and he alleged that these sets have been tripping whenever any loads are applied, “thus making them useless for the intended purpose.”
As such, the AFC is concerned that “due to lack of planning and mismanagement, several similar ill-advised, … procurement deals will be undertaken, in an effort to maintain some level of functionality on the DBIS.” And citizens were also cautioned to be aware, that if ever the gas-to-energy project becomes operational, all other generating sets on the DBIS will be “mothballed”, which means that all the investments for additional power will be considered “sunk costs”.
Further, the AFC noted that no progress has been made on the country’s application to the US EXIM bank for the loan to fund the gas-to-energy project.
