Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali says Guyana will soon com­mence one of the world’s fastest gas-to-shore projects and is al­so aim­ing to have a sec­ond ma­jor gas pipeline ready by 2030 to sup­port the coun­try’s in­dus­tri­al growth.

Speak­ing at a re­cep­tion host­ed for vis­it­ing UK Par­lia­men­tar­i­an Paulette Hamil­ton and the UK Trade Mis­sion, Pres­i­dent Ali said the sec­ond pipeline is cen­tral to Guyana’s long-term en­er­gy and man­u­fac­tur­ing am­bi­tions.

“We will have to break every sin­gle record in the world,” he said, un­der­scor­ing the scale and ur­gency of the project.

He said Guyana is poised to ac­tu­alise the project more swift­ly than any sim­i­lar gas pipeline de­vel­op­ment, from con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion to de­liv­ery.

“Be­fore the end of 2030, the sec­ond gas line must be brought to shore, and that will be linked to the deep­wa­ter port and the whole in­fra­struc­ture be­ing built out in Berbice. For that to hap­pen, we will have to break every sin­gle record in the world.”

The gov­ern­ment said that the sec­ond pipeline is ex­pect­ed to fu­el ex­pand­ed in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment in Berbice, sup­port petro­chem­i­cals, fer­tilis­ers, LNG, agro-pro­cess­ing and light man­u­fac­tur­ing as well as de­liv­er clean­er, cheap­er and more re­li­able en­er­gy, while strength­en­ing Guyana’s po­si­tion as the re­gion’s man­u­fac­tur­ing hub.

The project, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Exxon­Mo­bil, will com­ple­ment the 300MW Gas-to-En­er­gy de­vel­op­ment at Wales, the coun­try­wide ex­pan­sion of so­lar and hy­dro pow­er, and the re­build­ing of the na­tion’s trans­mis­sion net­works.

Pres­i­dent Ali told the vis­it­ing trade mis­sion that im­ple­ment­ing the pipeline quick­ly needs strong in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion, not­ing the Unit­ed King­dom’s valu­able part­ner­ship with Guyana.

Guyana’s gas to en­er­gy project aims to low­er elec­tric­i­ty costs by us­ing off­shore nat­ur­al gas to gen­er­ate pow­er, with the project ex­pect­ed to dou­ble the coun­try’s elec­tric­i­ty-gen­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty.

The project in­cludes a 120-mile pipeline, a 300-megawatt pow­er plant, and a nat­ur­al gas liq­uids (NGL) plant. The tar­get for first gas is in the fourth quar­ter of this year, and the project’s to­tal cost is es­ti­mat­ed at around US$1.9 bil­lion. (CMC)