Why is Lindsayca-CH4 here

Apr 06, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – On what basis was Lindsayca-CH4 (Lindsayca) granted a US$759M contract to construct a Natural Gas Liquids facility and a power plant (GtE components) in Guyana? How could any company with the shaky and dubious history of a Lindsayca-CH4 be approved to build key components of the US$2B Wales gas-to-energy project? Who in Guyana, serving in the capacity as bid reviewers and approvers, could have been so irresponsible to engage this company to contribute crucial parts of a project that holds so much promise for citizens?

And which final decisionmakers in the PPPC Government could have suffered from such a terrible lapse in judgment, such a deficit in what ethical leadership demands, that what is sold as a major relief effort for energy-starved Guyanese has been so botched from the inception?

The record of Lindsayca is checkered, to be charitable, and a company that is odious, best given the widest berth, to be blunt. In other words, its own record condemns it, a company that this country should not do any business with. Certainly, not for US$1M, much less for US$759M, and what amount looks like it is poised to take off by another US$180M. Lindsayca needs that hefty cash infusion to keep it going and delivering something at the Wales GtE project. It is already the beneficiary of an arbitration award that went against Guyana for US82M, but it is so cash-strapped that another US$180M could be gobbled up in no time. The project is delayed, more millions are urgently needed for a restart, and Guyanese had better prepare themselves for an increase in the Lindsayca portions of the Wales GtE project cost by close to 25% of the original contract of US$759M.

We at this paper harbor fears that this is just the beginning of additions to the final cost for the long promised cheap, reliable electricity. When dealing with a company that has had the difficult past of Lindsayca, there isn’t much to expect. This company has all the markings of an experiment in failure, of which Guyanese are getting their first taste. We have editorialized before that the Wales GtE could be good for citizens, but it must be in good hands, as built on a good beginning.

It has not been so, with secrecies plaguing the project from its first days, and calls for the release of the financial and other feasibility studies done falling on deaf ears, along with intense hostility being a common feature of government leaders. Secrets have shadowed this project from the beginning, and to those, we now add coverup, through the US$82M arbitration award won by Lindsayca and that now another addition to what started out at less than a billion when it left the drawing board, has now grown to over US$2B, and is geared to grow by leaps and bounds. Suddenly, it is not an exaggeration at all to think that the Wales GtE will not just reach US$3B, but could fly past it.

The warning signs were there, and it baffles that the Guyanese conducting due diligence on the documents submitted by Lindsayca could have been so blind, and so negligent. We are tempted to say that it was almost willful. The company’s financials lacked the robustness needed to entrust in its hands two project portions that totaled over three quarters of a billion US dollars. Why touch a company with such financials, who does something like that? The company’s work history does not impress, and should have been alarming enough to shut down its bid there and then. Why did the PPPC Government’s evaluators not give the kind of critical weight that they should have to Lindsayca’s track record in Columbia and Venezuela, and the gaping holes left in both those countries? And why were the difficulties associated with Lindsayca’s Puerto Rican-based business partner not considered, and be a factor in rejecting its bid to construct those two vital components in the Wales GtE?

When a government makes secrets it standard operating practice, and leaders decide on tricks as the best form of governance, then a Lindsayca can be approved to work here, only for it to become a costly Guyanese problem. We foresee more to come.

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Editorial, Lindsayca-CH4, natural gas liquids, power plant, PPPC

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