The Guyana gov­ern­ment says its pri­or­i­ty re­mains the com­ple­tion of the gas to en­er­gy (GTE) project “in the short­est pos­si­ble time” fol­low­ing a rul­ing by the Dis­pute Avoid­ance and Ad­ju­di­ca­tion Board (DAAB) late last month.

The DAAB is­sued its rul­ing in the dis­pute be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the con­trac­tor, Lind­say­ca/CH4, in con­nec­tion with the GTE 300 MW In­te­grat­ed Plant on Jan­u­ary 31, af­ter the mat­ter had been re­ferred to it on Sep­tem­ber 19, 2024.

Fol­low­ing the DAAB rul­ing, the par­ties have 28 days to de­ter­mine if they wish to re­fer the de­ci­sions, or any part there­of, to ar­bi­tra­tion, which would be the next stage in the dis­pute res­o­lu­tion process.

The gov­ern­ment said that cer­tain as­pects of the project were ex­e­cut­ed on be­half of the gov­ern­ment by Exxon Mo­bil. The Ir­faan Ali ad­min­is­tra­tion said it will, there­fore, in the next few weeks, in con­sul­ta­tion with its part­ners, in­clud­ing Exxon/Mo­bil, as well as rel­e­vant le­gal and tech­ni­cal ad­vi­sors, de­ter­mine the best course for­ward for GOG.

“The gov­ern­ment of Guyana’s pri­or­i­ty con­tin­ues to be to en­sure that the project is com­plet­ed in the short­est pos­si­ble time and in keep­ing with con­trac­tu­al spec­i­fi­ca­tions, with a view to bring­ing the pow­er plant and the NGL plant in­to op­er­a­tion and de­liv­er­ing the as­so­ci­at­ed ben­e­fits to the Guyanese Peo­ple as soon as pos­si­ble."

“When com­plet­ed, the project’s ben­e­fits will in­clude a dou­bling of the coun­try’s elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing ca­pac­i­ty to meet grow­ing de­mand and a re­duc­tion in the cost of gen­er­a­tion, there­by en­abling elec­tric­i­ty prices paid by con­sumers to be cut by 50 per cent."

“This will, in turn, catal­yse rapid ex­pan­sion in in­dus­tri­al ac­tiv­i­ty, and im­me­di­ate­ly im­prove the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and all oth­er pro­duc­tive sec­tors that are en­er­gy in­ten­sive, bring­ing vast em­ploy­ment and en­tre­pre­neur­ial op­por­tu­ni­ties for Guyanese na­tion­als,” the gov­ern­ment said.

It said al­so that the com­ple­tion of the project will fa­cil­i­tate oth­er ben­e­fits such as a re­duc­tion in the cost of LPG cook­ing gas to house­holds and busi­ness­es, and the re­al­i­sa­tion of do­mes­tic self-suf­fi­cien­cy with sig­nif­i­cant sur­plus for the ex­port mar­ket.

“Con­se­quent­ly, the project will not on­ly gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant for­eign cur­ren­cy sav­ings for our coun­try as a re­sult of re­duced im­ports, but al­so gen­er­ate ad­di­tion­al ex­port rev­enue, bring­ing with it the at­ten­dant macro­eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of a stronger bal­ance of pay­ments po­si­tion, which will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the Guyanese peo­ple,” it added.

Mean­while, the gov­ern­ment has de­scribed as “mis­chie­vous” me­dia re­ports here re­gard­ing the on­go­ing bid for the oil and gas li­cens­ing round for the open acreage of oil and gas blocks with­in the coun­try.

A state­ment from the Min­istry of Nat­ur­al Re­sources re­called that in 2022, the gov­ern­ment launched the oil and gas li­cens­ing round adding that the fis­cal terms, tech­ni­cal and fi­nan­cial re­quire­ments, and draft Pe­tro­le­um Agree­ments (PSAs) were made pub­licly avail­able to po­ten­tial bid­ders as part of the process, en­cour­ag­ing bids from qual­i­fied en­ti­ties.

The state­ment said that of the to­tal avail­able blocks, span­ning both deep and shal­low wa­ter depths, eight blocks re­ceived bids which were du­ly re­viewed, with eval­u­a­tions con­duct­ed in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices and the terms out­lined in the bid round doc­u­ments.

It said that fol­low­ing the re­view process, the bid­ders demon­strat­ing the most sus­tain­able and re­spon­sive pro­pos­als were short­list­ed and en­gaged, to award blocks and grant li­cens­es and PSAs, this in­for­ma­tion was made pub­lic.

“In this re­gard, we con­sid­er it very mis­chie­vous to see news ar­ti­cles…claim­ing that the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion was not be­ing shared. On the con­trary, this process has been trans­par­ent, with on­go­ing pub­lic en­gage­ment.

“The most sub­stan­tial­ly re­spon­sive bid­ders have been pub­licly an­nounced, and the process is cur­rent­ly in its fi­nal stages, with the awardees ex­pect­ed to be for­malised soon. When the reg­u­la­to­ry process is com­plet­ed, a press event will be held to mark the sign­ing of the PSAs, en­sur­ing that the pub­lic re­mains in­formed through­out the process,” the state­ment said.

It said whilst the process is on­go­ing for all the blocks, at this stage a min­i­mum of four PSAs are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed and signed for the year 2025. These in­clude blocks S4 – To­tal­En­er­gies, Qatar En­er­gy, and Petronas; S5 – In­ter­na­tion­al Group In­vest­ment Inc.; S7 – Cy­bele En­er­gy; and S10 – In­ter­na­tion­al Group In­vest­ment Inc.

“The gov­ern­ment of Guyana recog­nis­es the sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic in­ter­est in this sec­tor and re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that the de­vel­op­ment of the oil and gas in­dus­try is con­duct­ed in a man­ner that is both trans­par­ent and ben­e­fi­cial to the coun­try as a whole,” the state­ment added.

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Feb 4, CMC –

CMC/gt/ir/2025