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Cash cow
Editorial
(Kaieteur News) – While Guyanese struggle to manage in this oil rich country, foreigners see a bank with an open vault. A cash cow waiting to be milked, then milked for as long as they are allowed to get away with doing so.
Lindsayca Development LLP signed a US$759M contract with Guyana to build two facilities at Wales. For US$759M, Guyana gets a Natural Gas Liquids facility and a 300-megawatt power generation plant. Apparently, Lindsayca cannot deliver at that price anymore. According to its 2024 Annual Report, the company can commit to delivering on the two facilities, but only if it can grab an additional US$250M out of the Guyana Government.
A company that walked away from unfinished projects in Venezuela and Columbia is, apparently, back at playing its familiar game. Get in on a big project with much fanfare, make the work look overwhelming, raise the price in midstream, and takeoff when things do not workout, as planned. Could this be the next chapter in the Guyana-Lindsayca contractual agreement?
Sharp differences are brewing between the parties, becoming more entrenched with each new snippet of well-guarded information trickling out of this US$2B Wales Gas-to-Energy project (project). The Lindsayca portions of the project are running behind the clock, there are contradictory delivery times, and there are clashes over money. It is a volatile, toxic brew. Moreover, there is a hint, the slightest hint, that Guyana is being held hostage, with Lindsayca engaging in a high-risk gamble. It is more cost effective for Guyana to pay up the additional US$250M demanded, than to cut the company loose, and start over from scratch. What matters more than that ugly consideration is how much the PPPC Government is willing to play along.
Technical experts are of the view that project completion by 2026 yearend is out of the question, not even remotely possible. That’s the first stumbling block, with the second being money. Lindsayca wants US$250M more to stick around and finish the project. PPPC Government handpicked agents think that Guyana should not pay anything above US$170M. The fly in the ointment is that the final decision-maker, President Irfaan Ali, does not want to hear about Guyana paying a single dollar above the contracted US$759M to get the two facilities done at Wales.
What is to say that Lindsayca will not want to try to trick again, milk oil rich Guyana for a couple hundred million more. Frankly speaking, this gas-to-energy partner has manifested some ways that remind of vultures circling around, waiting to pounce at any opening. Lindsayca won a contract for a fat US$759M to deliver two top-of-the line plants. Lindsayca next won another US$102M as part of a dispute resolution board award. Still not satisfied, Lindsayca seeks to rip-off Guyana for an extra US$250M to get the two jobs done.
Suddenly, the last two components needed to linkup all the sections, fire up, and deliver as Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo promised on half price electricity, have now spiraled to over US$1B. Excluding the US$102M dispute award, the new US$250M that Lindsayca is hustling to wring out of Guyana would take the price to date of the Wales project to US$1.009B. For the record, we make the point that the US$102M that the dispute board decided that Guyana has to pay to Lindsayca has to count. It is part of the cost of the Wales project, and should be included, which pushes the current total price to US$1.111B.
Lindsayca is making a killing off Guyana, while slowly bleeding Guyana for a hundred million today, and another two hundred on another, if it can find a way to sneak that one through. What is to say that this opportunistic company is done with pressuring the PPPC Government for hundreds of millions more, and not be back to try its luck again?
It is apparent that some foreign companies think that it is open season in Guyana. Give the money tree a vigorous shake, and there’s a shower of fruits. It has rained millions and more millions from cash cow Guyana, with Lindsayca collecting like a veteran welfare queen. We can’t help thinking about how much the Wales project will cost Guyana, when Lindsayca submits its final charges.
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