Lindsayca-CH4: what the hell

Apr 12, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall…

(Kaieteur News) – It is said that hindsight is perfect vision.  Given what Guyanese know now, why is Lindsayca-CH4 in Guyana?  This company should not be here to help a blind man walk across the road.  He would still be blind on reaching the other side of the road, but it would take some time to discover what he is missing.  This is my concern, my bone of contention about, this grand presence in Guyana called Lindsayca-CH4 that is really not grand at all, but merely a phantom relative to visions, to expectations, re its ability to deliver.  Everything that could be wrong, with a blinding, screaming siren against an entity such as Lindsayca-CH4 being here were at full blast, and yet, it is here and involved in constructing two plants to get the Wales gas-to-energy project working.  How come?  How in God’s name?  Forget God, leave God out of this kind of slack, slushy, business setup.  What happened to the vaunted Wales Energy Taskforce?  Okay, so, it lost its sense of sight.  But did its members and leader, lose their sense of smell (the odors) and their sense of balance and direction (what had/was, happening), like airline pilots trapped in a time warp?

Indeed, hindsight is 20/20, an optometrist’s worst nightmare considering the impacts on business.  But what kind of business went on in the reviewing and analyzing of Lindsayca-CH4’s package forwarded to support its bid to build a 300-MW power generation plant and a natural gas conversion plant at Wales?  No one could be so obtuse, so handicapped, so useless to this country and its peoples, that an entity with the shoddy and slippery background of Lindsayca-CH4 could have marched past.  It is obvious (to me) that the screeners had scales covering their eyes, for look at the quality of the scrutiny that the Guyanese people got?  Oh, it is now going to cost them more.  A US$82 million arbitration loss by this country is a big dent.  But, based on Lindsayca-CH4’s dogeared, flea-infested, credentials, this country is in for more losses than it knows.

So, what did the Wales Taskforce know about LIndsayca-CH4, or didn’t care to know?  And when the Taskforce did know, why didn’t it do anything with what should have given a polite push to Lindsayca-CH4’s behind that tumbled it straight out the door?  I must ask the question, given hindsight: was Lindsayca-CH4 part of a fix, another sharp, enriching, PPP Govt scheme?  A partnership that pulls the wool over the eyes of Guyanese, with picking of their pockets resulting?  What else is there left to think, when the track record of the PPP Govt. itself is so riddled with sleaziness?  The Wales Taskforce has competent people, no matter how marginal, no matter how many massive mistakes they have made in the past.  They couldn’t have been that incompetent, so super lax on a review job that didn’t require too much intellectual power, nor any big expertise.

If what Lindsayca-CH4 did in Venezuela to Gazprom was missed (or glossed over, given a wink), there was Columbia and its hard, bitter, experience with the same Lindsayca-CH4.  With the Wales project, all of US$2 billion and counting, and the heat that it attracted on Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo’s head, the t’s had to be crossed, the i’s dotted, then doublechecked.  The Taskforce’s mindset, its burning ambition, had to have been this: these reviews for these two parts of the project cannot be mucked up, or there will be hell to pay.  If only to give some value to the Guyanese people for their US$759 million now seemingly in jeopardy.  I said forget God before; now I say forget about Guyanese.  The Wales Taskforce had to think and build their analysis and recommendations to make the project mastermind and project champion, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, look good, by doing what was good for him.  Perhaps, the Taskforce did, only Guyanese have yet to perceive in what form that beauty came to life.

In hindsight, a first year UG student would have done better in examining and delivering a true bill on Lindsayca-CH4.  Everything that could be wrong about the record of a company was wrong, and by the wheelbarrow.  Just ask the Venezuelans, Columbians, and Americans at the US Dept. of Treasury.  Now, here Guyanese find themselves weighing what really went on, and how much more they can absorb.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• GHK Lall, Lindsayca-CH4, Wales Energy Taskforce, Wales gas-to-energy project

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