Home Top Stories Gas to Shore project: Request for Proposal to be out by May...
The Guyana Government is looking to move on schedule with the much-touted gas-to-shore project, and according to Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, the Request for Proposals is expected to be out by the end of May.
During a press conference on Friday, Jagdeo disclosed that nine companies have been pre-qualified for the construction of the natural gas-fired power plant and the natural gas liquids (NGL) plant components of the project.
“A public process has been gone through. They have now pre-qualified, I think, nine companies to bid for the NGL facility and the gas power plant. We are working now, since the two have been combined because we believe that the synergy will save us, and therefore, it required a bit more work at preparing the Request For Proposal. We’re hoping by the end of May that Request For Proposal will go out to the nine pre-qualified companies,” the Vice President stated.
Head of the Gas-to-Shore Taskforce, Winston Brassington had previously explained that ExxonMobil Guyana, which is funding the pipeline aspect of the project out of cost oil, has found that there will be substantial savings from combining these two facilities. Hence, it was agreed that the power plant and the NGL plant will be done as a combined Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) process.
The aim is to deliver rich gas by the end of 2024 for the power plant while the NGL facility is slated to be online by 2025.
Jagdeo told reporters that the Guyana Government is committed to own both facilities with the intention to use the rich gas produced to generate electricity to feed into the national grid thus potentially lowering costs and improving power efficiency in the country.
“We are not going to do a BOOT (Build Own Operate and Transfer) arrangement here – people will construct [and hand over to Government] …Where we raise the financing from is a different issue – if people have to bring in the financing, the developers or so. But it’s the intention of the Government to own both the power plant facility and the NGL facility. We believe owning that NGL facility is a very lucrative thing that could help us to quickly amortise the pipeline and also even amortise the other investments,” the Vice President posited.
Only last week, ExxonMobil, through its local affiliate – Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL) – submitted its Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report, seeking approval for the gas-to-shore project in which it is injecting some US$1.3 billion and wants to see the inclusion of women in the construction of the facility.
The purpose of the EIA is to provide the factual and technical basis required by the EPA to make an informed decision on EEPGL’s application for environmental authorisation for the project.
Following the receipt of the EIA earlier this week, the EPA has since given a 60-day timeline for the public to make submissions on the project.
When the EPA grants the environmental authorisation to EEPGL and its co-venturers in the Stabroek Block – Hess Guyana Exploration Limited and CNOOC Petroleum Guyana Limited, construction is likely to commence soon after receiving all other approvals. In fact, the oil company is targeting August this year to start the preparation of the NGL plant site. The entire construction process will take some three years hence rich gas is expected to be delivered onshore by the end of 2024, and the NGL plant to be operational by mid-2025.
The gas-to-shore project, which has a 25-year lifespan, is expected to employ up to 800 workers during the peak construction stage, as well as some 40 full-time workers during the operations stage, and another 50 workers during the decommissioning stage.
The scope of the US$900 million gas-to-shore project consists of the construction of 225 kilometres of pipelines from the Liza field in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana, where Exxon and its partners are currently producing oil.
It features approximately 220 kilometres of a subsea pipeline offshore that will run from the Destiny and Unity floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels in the Stabroek Block to onshore. Upon landing on the West Coast Demerara shore, the pipeline will continue approximately 25 kilometres to the NGL plant at Wales, West Bank Demerara.
The pipeline would be 12 inches and is expected to transport some 50 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) of dry gas to the NGL plant but has the capacity to push as much 120 mmscfd.
The pipeline’s route onshore will follow the same path with the fibre optic cables and will terminate at Hermitage, part of the Wales Development Zone (WDZ) which will house the gas-to-shore project.
The Guyana Government has invited interested parties to make investments in the Wales Development Zone, which will be heavily industrialised and for which approximately 150 acres of land has been allocated. Those lands were previously used by the Wales Sugar Estate.