– for all Guyanese when oil and gas production begins, says Greenidge

THE use of natural gas to supply electricity via a 300-megawatt turbine and the production of domestic bottled gas are atop government’s priorities when resources from Guyana’s oil and gas industry come on stream.

This is according to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Greenidge, who was at the times addressing a Town Hall meeting at York College, USA, before an audience of the Guyanese diaspora.

“The biggest problem that Guyana faces today in terms of development on the investment side are the concerns in relation to ensure that energy is provided. Guyanese households pay more for electricity than any other country in the Caribbean; so an urgent necessity is to use the resources to bring the charges for electricity to an affordable level,” Greenidge said.

According to Greenidge, if realised, the electricity provided by the natural gas would be even more than what would have been made available with the Amaila Falls hydropower project.

“The first step would be to utilise, as soon as it’s available, gas from Liza 1 for driving a turbine which will supply electricity equivalent to 300 megawatts, [that is] roughly twice the size of the output that would have come from Amaila if it had delivered what it was supposed to deliver,” Greenidge explained
“So one early and immediate consequence of the find will be to ensure that power is presented to Guyana at a reasonable rate. So we’re speaking now of the laying of pipeline from the vessel that is drilling to the coast; building that pipeline and connecting that pipeline to turbines and eventually replacing the diesel power that [GPL] depends on for the supply of electricity to Georgetown. It would also be used to bottle gas, so that domestic cooking, which is largely done in Guyana with gas, will also be provided from the rig.”

The idea of using natural gas from Guyana’s discovery to generate electricity is a notion that has been in consideration since last year. The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) in an advertisement invited expressions of interest (EoI) for the development and installation of a 50-megawatt (MWs) capacity natural gas-fired power plant
Addressing the gathering on a number of issues, including the plans for Guyana’s oil and gas industry, Greenidge noted that aside from directly using the gas, government is also banking on immediately investing in several infrastructural works across the country.
These include the construction of the Linden/Lethem Road and the new bridge across the Demerara River.

“The purpose of the exercise is to address in the first instance the infrastructural inadequacies of Guyana, first as I say is power. Second would be the transport network. We do have an inadequacy of roads, and bridges associated with roads, in Guyana and that has to be a priority. The bridge across the Demerara [River], as you know there is an existing floating bridge constructed in 1978; it poses many problems in its operation. So these are among the priorities,” Greenidge related.