Leaders want gas-to-shore regardless

Feb 27, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The Wales gas-to-shore project started off on the wrong foot. It has never regained its balance, or provides Guyanese, who will be footing the gargantuan bill, with some degree of comfort. In fact, the opposite is true, meaning that the more we hear and learn about it, in bits and pieces, the worse this project appears. Inexplicably, leaders in this PPP/C Government are hell bent on making it a reality, no matter what its final cost is, and regardless of all the negatives. Daily, it takes on the appearance of what could be Guyana’s worst financial nightmare in the making, with the possible exception of a catastrophic oil spill, while we don’t have full insurance coverage for such a situation.
The little news that comes from this gas-to-shore undertaking goes from bad to worse. First, there is the issue of the final price tag, which is still not finalised. The coalition in its time earmarked Clonbrook, East Coast Demerara for its gas-to-shore destination, and at a cost of US$600M. When the PPP/C took over the levers of power in 2020, the cost of the project, now redirected to Wales, jumped first to US$900M, in the shortest span, soared to a staggering US$1.3B. In Guyana dollars, the Wales gas-to-shore project went from approximately GY$1.8 trillion to about GY$2.6 trillion. These are numbers that the masses of Guyana can pronounce easily, but understand only with the greatest difficulty, what they truly represent, then only a few of them. We can assert with some confidence that these are numbers that have never been used before in Guyana for anything, whether public or private.
From the inception of its handling by this PPP/C Government, the Wales gas-to-shore project has been shrouded in near impenetrable secrecy. We will not repeat any clichés about the devastations of corruption, as they are known well enough, and are so often employed in association with governance, that they have become anguishing reminders of where we are and tiring in the frequency of them. But we will say this: a project of this financial magnitude and with its ongoing negative features, as withheld by politicians, lacking in credibility, cannot be advantageous to the citizens of this country. The coalition, no slouch itself in the corruption department, has come right out and declared the Wales gas-to-shore project a hotbed for corruption, compliments of an unchecked PPP/C Government and its arrogant leaders, with the steep increase in the price held out as proof of what is afoot. What is still more alarming is that this kind of money is being talked about, and the final cost could be much more, and for something on which the nation is in the dark.
Regarding the benefits of the Wales gas-to-shore, the first promise is of something that all of us have longed for over many decades, which is a cheaper power supply to our homes and places of business. This is where contentiousness has pole vaulted into the debates with raging differences about overpromising through underpricing by the PPP/C Government, as accused by the coalition representative in parliament. Then, there was a call for a more sensible mix and balance involving fossil sources in the first instance, and renewables in the next. Those were given the shortest thrift by the government of today. They will not listen, they will not be stopped, and when such is the case, as Guyanese have learned from bitter past lessons, it means that financial mischief of the greatest magnitude is underway. How great is still up in the air, as the project is still hovering on the drawing board, with credible feasibility studies supposedly in motion.
Now, the most recent development is that the quantity of natural gas to be piped from offshore to the new power plant would be barely enough to meet the requirements of that facility, with some left over for domestic cooking purposes (KN February 22). Some related products could be delayed indefinitely. Clearly, this troubled project is shaping up to be a failure from now, leaving us with a trillion-dollar yoke that hobbles and cripples us forever. But Government leaders must have it, come hell or damnation.

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