Alliance For Change (AFC) members during their recent meeting with the United States Department of State, raised several concerns including, the lack of a feasibility study for the government’s Wales Gas-To-Energy (GTE) project.
This was disclosed on Friday by AFC’s leader, Nigel Hughes during a press conference. On October 7, Hughes and his delegation met with the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC.
Hughes told reporters, “There were several concerns that we raised…principal amongst them, of course, was the fact that there was an absence of any sort of feasibility work done in relation to the gas-to-energy project.”
AFC also raised concerns about the government’s decision to move forward with a project of this magnitude without conducting adequate feasibility assessments. “We did say that we were concerned that this was an approach that the government had adopted across several projects, but particularly with the gas-to-energy project,” the AFC leader stated.
He said the delegation believes environmental and technical feasibility studies should have been done before the project had advanced.
Moreover, Hughes disclosed that the AFC told the U.S Department of State that the party is worried that the government would approach an international financial institution like the United States Export-Import (EXIM) Bank without any feasibility work being done.
Currently, the Government of Guyana (GoG) is awaiting the US-EXIM Bank to green light a US$646 million loan to fund the highly anticipated project.
The project is a venture by the government with the aim of slashing consumers’ electricity bills in half by 2025. It entails transporting the gas through a pipeline from the offshore Stabroek Block to a Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) facility and a 300-megawatt power plant located at Wales, West Bank Demerara.
