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Moving Target
(Kaieteur News) – There is a ray of light creeping over the horizon. The first energy delivery from the Wales Gas-to-Energy (GtE) is expected by year-end. It would be a small tranche of energy, followed by more megawatts during 2027. This has been the GtE, a moving target, with one delivery date after another not being met. Nothing being said by the government until questioned persistently, only for citizens then to be told that the start date for the flow of power has shifted. Will the year-end promise come true? Will next year’s schedule of more energy to be delivered become reality?
According to Prime Minister Mark Phillips, 57 megawatts will be on stream by the end of this year. It is almost two years to the day past the first promised completion of the Wales GtE. From the prime minister’s own statement, only one sixth of the full 300 megawatts of power will be fed into the national system. A total of 228 megawatts is expected towards the end of 2027, three years after the original finish date. We note that 228 megawatts, though representative of a substantial amount of power, is still not the full indicated capacity of the Wales GtE. It seems that approximately 16 percent of that capacity will be generated by year end. We are already thinking of what will be the fate, what timeline it will be before for the rest of the energy is part of the national grid.
Whatever has been said before by the man whose brainchild this project is has not held up. Vice President and chief oil and gas policymaker, Bharrat Jagdeo, having failed to deliver with the GtE, now fails to make an appearance to inform the nation about the state of its most expensive land-based project. GtE taskforce head, Winston Brassington, said earlier this year that the project would be competed and fully operational by the middle of next year (2027). Like so many prior commitments and prior dates announced, it is now obvious that mid-2027 is off the schedule. We should have some confidence that 2027 year-end is feasible, since it is a whole year (another year) that the GtE team has at its disposal. We are not so sure, and with justification. One delivery date after another has fallen off the charts, with energy starved Guyanese left hanging and hoping.
From Prime Minister Phillips, citizens learned that the departure of the Turkish powerboats will be timed to coincide with the first phase delivery of 57 megawatts of energy from the GtE in the fourth quarter of this year. When Jagdeo, the project’s mastermind distanced from the GtE, and taskforce head Brassington had little of anything to say, Phillips ended up with the thankless job of defending and explaining the delays in the GtE to angry and impatient citizens. Electricity supply has ranged from spotty to chronically short, leading to all the related household and commercial ailments that occur as a result of that deficit. The Turkish powerboats gave some relief with 75 megawatts of power. Frequently many citizens wondered if those 75 megawatts are imaginary, considering the consistency of power outages.
For his part, the prime minister has tried, but has not had much to offer. Dates that shift, delays that continue, and increasingly skeptical listeners. His most recent sharing is of a mere 57 megawatts coming onboard by this year end. We hope that the government does not pull the plug too early relative to the Turkish powerboats. There could be some disconnect and confusion (and energy shortages) for Guyanese to cope with. Also, there is the much hoped-for, long-awaited 50 percent reduction in electricity bills. Phillips said that it is going to happen, but it will have to wait. That movie was seen before. On each occasion that it is seen, the scenes have been edited, a brand-new presentation is made to citizens. To repeat the well-known, electricity rates have been a source of pain to families and businesses, especially the smaller ones in the latter group. Citizens have been looking forward, hanging on to that half-price electricity promise. It is another example of the moving target that has been the story of this problem-plagued Wales GtE.
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