Opposition will not kill GtE Project – VP Jagdeo

Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has declared that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government will not allow efforts by the Opposition to kill the highly anticipated Gas-to-Energy (GtE) Project.

The US$759 million project, which will utilise gas resources that will be piped from offshore, will see the construction of a 300-megawatt (MW) Combined Cycle Power Plant and a Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) facility built at Wales, West Bank Demerara (WBD).

Works are ongoing and the contractor, Lindsayca CH4 Guyana Inc. – a United States (US)-based consortium of Lindsayca and CH4 (LNDCH4), is expected to deliver power in a few months’ time and when this happens, Guyanese will see the cost of electricity slashed by half and benefit from reliable power supply.

Guyana has already secured a US$527 million loan from the US Export-Import (EXIM) Bank to partially finance the project and has also set aside some G$51 billion in the 2025 Budget to advance works on the project.

During his weekly press conference last Thursday, Jagdeo responded to A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and Alliance for Change (AFC) Opposition parties’ continued criticisms about the initiative, detailing how the project will benefit Guyanese.

“APNU doesn’t believe [the project is] a priority but we believe lower electricity prices and stable electricity, and lower cooking gas prices are important for [Guyanese]. They are trying to kill that project… [But] they’re not killing this project,” the Vice President posited.

On the other hand, he noted that the AFC is now trying to recover from being proven wrong, when they claimed back in November that the Government lied and that the US EXIM Bank did not approve the loan for the project.

The US financial institution announced on December 26, 2024, that it had approved the loan, and subsequently inked the agreement on January 10, when the EXIM Bank President and Chair, Reta Jo Lewis, visited Georgetown.

According to Jagdeo, the AFC is now back at it again, claiming this time no feasibility study was done on the GtE Project.

However, the Vice President pointed to the due diligence report that was produced by US-based energy consultancy, Sargent & Lundy, which was retained by the EXIM Bank to look into the technical and financial feasibility of the GtE Project.

“The AFC and the APNU believe that the way they ran Guyana and the way they run their affairs now as cake shop operation, that that is how a bank like EXIM Bank would run and would just hand over US$500 million to a country just like that and not do their own due diligence on a project surrounding its feasibility.

“They would’ve never made a loan to a project like this. They did a 197-page due diligence report that we have but it’s the property of EXIM Bank; it is their property… The project is going to be built. It has the loan [and] in spite of what they said, it would be completed. It would generate power, it would cut electricity prices by half, it would result in significant savings on cooking gas and we’ll get about US$380 million per year of savings to the Guyanese people if we use all the gas. That is what will happen,” he asserted.

The Vice President emphasised that, while in opposition, the PPP/C recognised the significant benefits such a project could offer citizens. Consequently, upon assuming office in 2020, the initiative was made a high priority to address the country’s ongoing electricity challenges.

“The numbers are so phenomenal… What is new about this technical feasibility? Have people built pipelines before in the world; yes, most of the world can build a pipeline. Have they built power plants before; yes. So, what’s wrong with using your own gas to build a pipeline where the numbers are so apparent to even a clown… That’s why I said it’s a no-brainer. So, I’m not going to get into this every week for people who are ignorant about basic things [and] who lied about the Amaila Falls [Hydropower Project] for the same reason,” he contended.

Jagdeo, a former President of Guyana, had initiated the 165-MW Amaila Falls Hydropower Project (AFHP) during his term in office, as the flagship initiative for the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).

But the project failed to take off when developer Sithe Global announced that it was pulling out of the project, which it said was too large to continue without national consensus and had cited the lack of consensus in Parliament.

At the time, the then APNU and AFC Oppositions had both expressed concerns about the project and voted down key pieces of legislation, which consequently halted the project.
Then during its term in office from 2015 to 2020, the APNU/AFC Coalition Administration again shelved the project.

But Jagdeo declared last week that the PPP/C Government will not allow the GtE Project to have a similar fate.

“It’s Amaila all over again and you know, we were not robust enough in that period, taking them on, on Amaila, when all the lies were told about $2 billion of debt, which was a lie because it was contingent liability [and] they talked about water running out from Amaila, 30 cents per kilowatt/hour (kWh) and we allowed them to kill it. They’re not killing this project; they’re not killing it,” VP Jagdeo insisted.