to soon offer farmers cheaper options to transport goods to Georgetown

LOCAL firm, GAICO, is now offering oil-and-gas support services, with the completion of its port facility and laydown yard at Nismes, West Bank Demerara.
In an exclusive interview with the Guyana Chronicle, GAICO’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Komal Singh said the US$25 million investment has been supporting the ongoing gas-to-energy project and several other major projects underway in Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara).

“The wharf has been a great help to the development that is taking place on the West Demerara. All the pipelines; the land- base pipeline project, all the materials from that project were discharged and passed through that facility,” Singh told this publication.

A 12-inch pipeline, which will stretch some 200 km from offshore, will be used to transport natural gas from the Liza Phase One and Liza Phase Two Floating, Production, Storage, and Offloading (FPSO) vessels offshore to the power plant and Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) facility which is being constructed at Wales, West Bank Demerara.

“Our laydown yard is currently being used for the C6 pipeline project, and like all other developments in Region Three, it’s seeing massive growth at this point in time. We hope to make Region Three a major developmental hub as a result of the gas-to-energy project that is currently in place,” Singh said.

Currently, the region is undergoing an infrastructural transformation with the ongoing construction of a new four-lane highway from Schoonord, West Bank Demerara, just across the way from the western end of the Demerara Harbour Bridge, to Crane, on the West Coast Demerara.

Meanwhile, at the centre of the modernisation plans for the region is the construction of a new “fly-over” Demerara Harbour Bridge, which will stretch from Nandy Park, on the lower East Bank Demerara (EBD), to La Grange, on the West Bank Demerara.
Singh said that the port is not only a new addition to the region, but it will play an important role in the massive development slated for the region by complementing the numerous ongoing projects being done there.

Additionally, the facility will also be able to support the local agriculture sector, and provide farmers with affordable transportation to ship their produce from the region to the capital city, Georgetown.

“At this point in time, farmers moving cargo have not gone through there as yet, because most of the vessels are still in the Georgetown area. But when the new bridge is finished, that will open up a whole host of opportunities to remove some of those barriers, and reduce some of those extra costs that farmers have to pay to travel to Georgetown,” Singh said.
GAICO, he said, is perfectly positioned to offer oil-spill response, and waste management services and equipment in the event of an oil spill. In addition to civil works, the company also provides services to the marine sector.

In August 2021, the Guyanese-owned company signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with two United States-based companies, Myer Marine Services and Hargrove EPC, at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas.

The objective of the MoU was to foster a deeper relationship, and to work in close collaboration for the development of projects in Guyana.
This strategic partnership will enable the transfer of skills and technology for the development of the Guyanese workforce in the growing oil-and-gas sector.

Additionally, in 2022, GAICO and Corena Group, which operates as GAICO-Corena Environmental Services, and the Guyana Shore Base Incorporated (GYSBI) pooled their resources to launch a US$10 million firm, Sustainable Environmental Solutions Guyana Inc. (SES), to manage “oil waste”.

SES is the materialisation of a joint venture partnership signed in February 2019, by the two companies to provide oil-spill response and waste management services to the country’s oil-and-gas industry.