US partnership wins US$760m power plant bid in Guyana

An American company has sealed a US$760-million deal to build two plants for using natural gas from offshore oilfields to produce electricity in Guyana.

Houston-based Lindsayca and CH-4 of Puerto Rico are partnering to construct a 300-megawatt power plant on Guyana’s west coast and a plant to provide it with gas now being mostly burned off, by a consortium, led by ExxonMobil, developing commercial quantities of oil and gas found in 2015.

Once the plants are completed over the next two years, much of the gas from at least three oilfields scheduled to be in operation would be piped ashore to be converted to electricity.

That should help Guyana’s residents who have experienced decades of rolling blackouts, and it will cut costs by lessening the need for expensive fuel imports to fire current power plants, President Irfaan Ali said at a contract-signing ceremony late Tuesday.

At the ceremony, US Ambassador Sarah Ann Lynch said she hopes the deal will encourage other American companies to bid on large state and private-sector contracts in Guyana.

Chinese state companies have been winning hundreds of millions of dollars in multiple projects in the former British colony, including a US$200-million project to modernise the local airport, lengthen the runway from 7,400 feet to nearly 11,000 feet, and install more than a half-dozen boarding bridges.

Earlier this year, China Railway Construction won a US$260-million bid to build a four-lane bridge over Georgetown Harbour connecting the east and west shores. It also won a US$184-million contract to widen and modernise the main east coast highway connecting the Guyana capital to neighbouring Suriname.

Of the six companies bidding to construct a border bridge between Guyana and Suriname, five are Chinese and one is Dutch.

– AP