No agreement yet with U.S. company to supply cheaper fuels to Guyana

Last Updated on Thursday, 2 October 2025, 22:13 by Writer

Almost eight months after the Guyana government had announced that Guyanese would be getting cheaper fuels by year end as a result of a deal with the United States-based Curlew Midstream to build a storage facility here, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday said no agreement has been inked.

“There were some major differences in the terms of the deal,” he said when asked by Demerara Waves Online News. Like with several oil and gas sector negotiations, this one with Curlew Midstream was suspended until after the September 1 general and regional elections.

Mr Jagdeo said the Guyana government would “re-engage” with the Arkansas-based Curlew Midstream and others to ensure that the deal would benefit Guyanese. “We’ll only sign up to an agreement that protects Guyana in the long-term but would yield significant short-term benefits to our country,” he said.

The Vice President said the project had entailed procurement of the fuels through Curlew Midstream and the establishment of a tank farm in Guyana to store more fuel to cut the price of procurement by between 20% percent to 35%. “That’s entirely doable. If we can do that, although we have the lowest gasoline and diesel price in the Caribbean because of the government subsidy, we can get that price even further down, significantly cheaper and that is the essence of the deal,” he said.

He said if government could not secure such terms, it would not sign an agreement. “We have our lawyers working on this and we are not going to be very convenient to sign things today that will harm our country 10 years from now, 20 years from now. We are not going to be rushed into signing any agreement,” Mr Jagdeo said.

The Vice President said government would do “all of the due diligence” before signing an agreement.

In February 2025, President Irfaan Ali had said that by year end Guyanese would have been buying cheaper fuels – amounting to about 30,000 barrels per day – from Curlew Midstream.

The project, he had said, also envisaged Guyana being a fuel hub for the Caribbean and northern Brazil.

The intention was for Curlew Midstream to construct a US$300 million state-of-the-art depot that would have a capacity of 750,o00 barrels of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and heavy fuel oil.