National plan on natural gas use for power generation being tweaked

Mar 07, 2018 ExxonMobil, News

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Guyana has started moves to update its plans on power generation to now include natural gas that will be produced in ExxonMobil’s offshore wells.
On Monday, the country’s energy officials and other stakeholders met to discuss a study on the power generation system expansion, during a forum at the Pegasus Hotel.
Involved in the process were representatives in the energy, infrastructure, and financial sectors as well as the Office of Climate Change – Ministry of Presidency, Renewable Energy Department. Also there were officials from the Guyana Power and Light Inc. (GPL), the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA), Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Public Infrastructure.
It was explained that while the 2016 study on power generation system expansion included imported natural gas, it did not include domestic natural gas.
Guyana is banking on the possibilities of using natural gas from ExxonMobil’s oil wells, located about 100 miles from shore, to power its generators.
It was explained that it therefore became necessary to update the study to take into consideration Guyana’s move towards domestic natural gas in electricity generation.
Coordinator of the Sustainable Energy Programme, Mr. Horace Williams explained: “A consultant group called Brugman SAS from Colombia was contracted to do the update and they proposed a set of activities and methodologies to update the 2016 studies.”
The updated 2018 study will focus on GPL’s power networks, with emphasis on the power expansion of the Demerara-Berbice interconnected system (DBIS) and the supply of electricity to Linden.
“It will also include an in-depth revision and analysis of renewable energy (RE) technologies and natural gas fired generation options.”
Furthermore, the 2018 study will include a preliminary socio-environmental impact and risk analysis of the issues associated with the candidate generation technologies and an analysis of the current regulations in order to reach regulatory policy recommendations to foster renewable energy (RE) generation technologies.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson said that “the forum enables us to provide cheap and reliable electricity to the country, so we are looking at all the alternatives possible for us to get where we want to be so that we can be 100 percent renewable by 2025. But, in the interim, we want to provide the country with cheap electricity.”
Minister within the Ministry of Finance, Jaipaul Sharma, echoed the words of Minister Patterson and emphasised that providing cheap, reliable electricity to the demanding sectors of the economy, particularly to the private sector is imperative.
Meanwhile, Chief Executive Officer of GEA, Dr. Mahender Sharma, lauded the study and said, “It’s a good thing for Guyana, because we certainly need to be advised on what the future could look like. I mean you can look at different scenarios; their views of an oil and gas economy will result in experiential demand growth.”
Special Assistant to Dr. Clive Thomas of the Ministry of the Presidency, Eric Philips, shared his views on the forum and said: “One, Guyana being an oil and gas producer will dramatically change our future, both in terms of our energy matrix as well as our ability to export, two, it will change the Private Sector in terms of cheap energy, even as we prepare for a green state, and we have the ability through oil and gas to fund it and three, we may need a new capital, and that this will allow us to understand how the energy matrix will take us to that path.”
According to the Update of the Study on system Expansion of the Generation System Methodology, it would identify the generating capacity expansion at minimum cost (present value of investment, fuel, O&M and non-served electricity costs) for the DBIS/Linden systems. In order to do so, it is necessary to evaluate and perform cost comparisons among the most appropriate power generation technologies that could be selected for new power generation capacity in the DBIS/Linden systems, including the reform of the existing diesel generating units to use natural gas.
This implies the economic comparison of thermoelectric, hydroelectric and other renewable energy expansion options of appropriate scale in order to identify options for building an initial plant of a relative large capacity, or options for use of natural gas in the existing generating units (for fuel oil substitution purposes) and also identifying future incorporation of smaller capacity additions required to supply demand growth.
A full report on the completion of the study is expected by this May. The cost of the consultation is US$183,000.

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