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Guyana to spend $26.2B on fuel for power ships in 2025
The first power ship.
Kaieteur News – Guyana will be spending a whopping $26,242,097,093 on fuel for the two power ships from Turkish company Karpowership in 2025.
This is according to a document seen by this publication, which was provided to the National Assembly on April 22, 2025. During the consideration of the 2025 Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure on February 3, 2025, the Prime Minister Brigadier (Ret’d) Mark Phillips had promised to provide subsequent to a request from former Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson.
Under Programme 023- Power Generation Patterson had requested a breakdown on the allocation of fuel for power ship one and two and the Colombia power station.
According to the figures in the document, in order to generate a total of 788,400 megawatt hours the two ships would need 1,172,255 barrels of fuel at the above listed cost.
Rental costs for the ships were also provided. It was revealed that the total daily cost to rent both ships is $48,847,450. Therefore, the first year Guyana will be paying $17,829,319,104. The two years combined would cost the country $35,658,68,208 or USD$165,854,131.
On May 2, 2024 this publication reported that the Turkish power ship contracted by the government to supply Guyana with some 36 megawatts of electricity for two years had arrived.
The second power ship in the Demerara River.
The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) posted the news about the vessel’s arrival on its Facebook page without any additional details. Karpowership will be stationed at Everton, Berbice, Region Six and will be interconnected with GPL’s grid at 69 kV and was expected to start delivering electricity to the country by May 8, 2024.
A contract for the ship was signed between the GPL Inc. and UCI, a subsidiary of UCC Holdings, a company incorporated in the state of Qatar. UCC Holdings has a strategic alliance with Karpowership International, a Turkish company. President Mohamed Irfaan Ali had told reporters that contracting a ship for two years was feasible to end Guyana’s blackout crisis for now until the US$2 billion and counting gas to energy project comes on stream. To date, Guyana remains in the dark over the true cost for electricity from the vessel.
Guyana had to pay a mobilisation fee of US$1 million to get the ship here and the contract, according to GPL, includes the provision of operation and maintenance services as part of the agreement. According to the utility company, “the contract requires GPL to pay UCI a fee of 6.62 US cents per kWh as a monthly charter fee for the powership and a monthly operation and maintenance fee of 0.98 US cents per kWh, based on electricity generated.”
Fast forward to December 11, 2024, the second power ship aimed at boosting electricity supply arrived in Guyana.
“The second power ship is currently in Guyana’s waters, making its way to the Demerara River where it will be docked and interconnected to GPL’s grid. Once connected, the ship will add 60 megawatts of generation to bolster GPL’s generation capacity within the Demerara-Berbice Interconnected System (DBIS),” GPL had stated.
The agreement to rent a second power ship was officially signed on November 13, 2024. GPL’s head, Kesh Nandlall had signed the contract with the managing director of the Americas, UCC Holdings Mr. Antonio Neto. According to a release from the Ministry of Finance, the powership will supply an additional 75 megawatts of power to the national grid. The power ship will be stationed in the Demerara River and will in its first phase, deliver 60 megawatts of generating capacity to the national grid.
The remaining 15 megawatts will be delivered in a second phase. The first power ship is being rented from the same company for a period of two years. That contract was signed between the GPL Inc. and UCI, a subsidiary of UCC Holdings, a company incorporated in the state of Qatar. UCC Holdings reportedly has a strategic alliance with Karpowership International, a Turkish company.
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