GMSA wants local sale of Guyana oil portion to lower electricity cost

Last Updated on Friday, 20 December 2019, 19:59 by Writer

The Guyana Manufacturers and Services Association (GMSA) recommends that the country’s entitled portion of refined oil be sold locally at a cheaper price in order to lower the cost of electricity especially to businesses.

GMSA President, Clinton Williams noted that many of the “long-standing jeopardies” are closely linked to the high cost and unreliability of electricity, resulting in poor performance by the business community. “The private sector and in particular the manufacturing sector will continue to underperform or perform below potential resulting in serious knock-on effects in jobs…,” he said.

Mr Williams says selling some of Guyana’s refined oil on the domestic market at lower prices is one possible solution for the country’s electricity woes. “In that context, we wish to recommend that we quickly enter into an appropriate arrangement that allows for the utilisation of part of our current and future crude oil exports receipts of refined oil at prices that are considerably cheaper than those that currently obtain at this time,” he said.

The idea was floated by Mr Williams in the presence of the Head of the Ministry of the Presidency’s Department of Energy, Dr. Mark Bynoe at the GMSA’s recent awards ceremony. But Dr Bynoe told News-Talk Radio 103.1 FM that he has not seen any proposal submitted to his department by the GMSA.

The Guyana government plans to source some of the natural gas from the offshore oil wells to generate electricity for domestic and commercial production mainly on the coastland.

The state-owned Guyana Power and Light also intends to purchase renewable energy from private providers with excess capacity and distribute the supply to the power grid.