Latest update June 4th, 2026 12:30 AM
Wales GTE – how much and when?
Editorial
(Kaieteur News) – The Wales Gas-to-Energy project (project) was priced at US$759M when Lindsayca-CH4 was awarded the contract to construct two facilities. One was for a Natural Gas Liquids plant, the other a 300-megawatt power plant. Since then, a Dispute Arbitration Award Board favoured the contractor with a US$97M settlement for delays related to unstable soil. Meanwhile, Lindayca-CH4 is working on an additional US$250M to get the two plants done. Considering those and other developments, several questions spring up. What will be the final cost for this GTE project? When will it be finished, fully operational? And, is the promised 50% cut in electricity bills still feasible?
In addition to the Lindsayca-CH4 US$97M award, there was US$2M for attorney fees, plus approximately US$166M for two Turkish powerboats, plus US$619M for fuel imports at higher costs due to the two-year delay in the GTE coming onstream. When these costs are aggregated, the result is a massive US$884M more that should be added to a project that began at US$759M. By the time it is completed, this project could cost Guyana not US$3B, as now looks likely, but still more. Americans, Turks, attorneys, and others with some relationship to the project have landed near a milking cow. The usual losers are Guyanese still waiting two years later for the promise and dream of cheap and a steady supply of electricity to happen. Though the focus has been on the cost elements that increased the price of the project, there is the time component.
It is nearing the middle of 2026, with no Wales GTE in operation. The promise was delivery in 2024. The new promise is by the end of this year. It is a shaky deadline for two reasons. First, more than one delivery deadline was made before with the same result. Electricity starved Guyanese consumers are still waiting and, to which we add, paying in scarce, hard-earned cash for a supply that is more often off than on. Second, people in the know, those who can claim some level of expertise about this type of project, believe that the project being operation by the end of this year is out of the question. Will December 2026 be like December 2024 and 2025? Will Guyanese who could use the electricity relief be disappointed once again? At the rate that the GTE game, which has been an uninterrupted scam so far, is going, 2026 yearend seems out. But to when, and how much more, those are among the questions for which answers have not been coming from the Project Consultant, Winston Brassington, or the brainbox behind the project, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, or the man who happens to have responsibility for energy, Prime Minister Mark Phillips. The prime minister has been a study of someone labouring under extremes stresses whenever he is asked to provide an update about this US$2B project.
No one in the PPP/C Government, nor any of those who have featured prominently in this expensive scheme that just keep growing in price and gobbling up years at a time, can present a straight story. They are uncomfortable supplying simple, credible answers. The foremost advocate for this project was Bharrat Jagdeo. On a weekly basis, and in his usual boisterous manner, he was the senior official who struggled with questions about the project. He first went around in circles, led the media on a merry-go-round. When the fault lines became more obvious, he resorted to hostility and abuse. When he ran out of answers that did not add up, he settled for a new tactic. He stopped answering questions (‘answered before’ and ‘not answering GTE questions anymore’). A leader hiding from his handiwork, jumping ship as calls intensified about where the Wales project is heading, and when this latest Guyanese taxpayer ordeal will be over and done.
Finally, half-priced electricity was promised to local consumers when the cost of the project was US$759M. When all of the additional costs identified above are factored in, does that still apply? With the Wales GTE project set to cost almost a billion more, it would be interesting to observe what new gimmicks the PPP/C Government and Jagdeo concoct to maintain the hoped-for half-priced electricity.
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