Guyana ranks US company No. 1 to build natural gas electricity, liquids plants

Last Updated on Thursday, 10 November 2022, 16:02 by Denis Chabrol

President Irfaan Ali on Thursday announced that the American-owned energy company, LINDSAYCA in a joint venture with CH4 Guyana, has been selected to forge ahead with negotiations to build an almost US$1 billion natural gas-fired electricity plant and natural gas liquids plant at Wales, West Bank Demerara.

He said in a video statement on Facebook that Cabinet on Thursday also decided to rank PowerChina as number two for negotiations should talks fall through with CH4/ LINDSAYCA. CH4 Guyana-LINDSAYCA has said it could build the two plants for US$899 million and PowerChina  has put a price tag of US$704 million.

The Guyana government hopes to ink a deal with CH4/ LINDSAYCA before the end of November, 2022 with the aim of completing construction of the electricity plant by December 2024. “Key considerations in the evaluation took account of the expected date of delivery of the 300 mw power plant by December 2024. Both top-ranked companies conformed to this deadline,” he said.

Supervising the construction of the Guyana government-owned plants would be Engineers India Ltd.  Bids would later be invited for a world class company to operate the facility. 

Regardless of which company is picked, the plants would be constructed under an Engineering Procurement Construction contract, the President said.

The President said CH4/ LINDSAYCA  and Power China were picked after two global engineering firms, Stantec and Worley, along with a representative of ExxonMobil evaluated the bids.

The selection of the Texas-based LINDSAYCA is expected to be good news for the United States whose Ambassador to Guyana , Sarah-Ann Lynch quite recently highlighted the value of American companies when she was asked for a comparison with Chinese companies that have been flocking to Guyana to construct mega projects.

“Our hope is that we can show, as the United States, is that our companies bring that not all investors bring to the table and that is quality, excellence, on-time, budgets, on-time projects. Therefore, we are hoping that we are the partner of choice in the majority of these projects,” she said the Wilson Center’s Plaza Central podcast on the topic, ” Guyana Oil Rush.”

The US government has provided a US$2 billion line of credit for American companies to do business in Guyana.

The Guyana government projects that Guyanese households and businesses would pay 5 US cents per kilowatt hour for electricity instead of the current estimate of 13 US cents. Currently, the Guyana government is subsidising electricity tariffs due to the steep increase in fuels being used for electricity generation, due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.