Dear Editor,
We shall be soon piping into October 2024, where we are told by high government authorities that the Gas to Energy (GtE) loan application in at the US Exim Bank will land on the Board of Director’s (BoD) agenda, allegedly based on environmental and technical studies’ rectitude. Thereafter, it would wend its way through Congressional and Federal Register Notification over a 35-day period and back to the BoD for final decision.
Just in the last week more GtE financial issues, with its procedural and legal non-compliance inter alia, have been brought to the fore in the media. It makes one stop to ponder the possible inimical effect of the much touted and haloed sanctity of contract viz a viz Petroleum Sharing Agreement (PSA) 2016 on this loan process. It is a requirement under section 12 of the PSA 2016 that a feasibility study for associated gas be conducted. To date this study nor any other gas study have not been sighted in the public forum. Requests for the same at all the contractual parties have been met with the silent mosaic stone wall treatment. Others more and highly qualified to speak on this issue have had the same treatment metered out as was reported in the media earlier in this GtE process.
Or perhaps the sanctity of contract only applies to the renegotiation aspect of the PSA 2016. Guyana is currently setting many firsts worldwide maybe this may be our contractual jurisprudential contribution to firsts!
Since December 2023, when the headlines read “US EXIMBANK poised to approve US$600 million for gas to shore project-Jagdeo” to the September headline of “Guyana closer to getting approval for US$646M EXIM Bank loan- says VP Jagdeo” with the intermittent updates in between, the carrot keeps moving all the while still staying within budget, according to the consultant Head of the GtE Task Force. Now we are informed that there is no timeline for the actual reduction of the 50% in electricity rate after the proposed GtE start up in 2025!
Time alone will tell. As some of our CARICOM siblings would say “end of October soon come”!
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Deane-Hughes