GtE project to create lucrative market for investments in AI data centres – Pres Ali

The US$759 million Gas-to-Energy (GtE) Project, which is expected to deliver power to the national grid by April 2025, would create a lucrative market for regional and international businesses to establish artificial intelligence (AI) data centres in Guyana.
President Dr Irfaan Ali announced on Tuesday that Government’s strategic policies are aimed at integrating energy infrastructure, addressing gaps, and achieving key targets; a major target being adequately utilizing the power from the national grid to supply AI data centres, which are facilities equipped with a vast amount of computing resources specifically designed for AI workloads and to provide the infrastructure necessary to train and deploy complex machine learning models and algorithms.
“Gas resource as a regional asset, whether for expanding energy needs…and for us in Guyana, the first Gas-to-an-Energy power plant that was building — and we’re already out for the second one, because we understand that the growth is so enormous that the demand is going to outstrip that, especially when you are going to cut the cost of power (by) half, everybody will go on the grid. But importantly, there is an opportunity now for competitive energy prices, not only for manufacturing and industrial development, but for data centres, especially AI-driven data centres”, the President has said.
“We know that the enormous gap as to where we are now and where we ought to be…but we have cancelled out where we ought to be, and we are focusing on where the world will be in 2030, and we are applying the rationale that we’ll build for where the world will be in 2030 as against where we ought to be, and then working backwards and bringing the population up to speed with that. So, we are adjusting in real-time the gap: the digital gap, technology gap, infrastructure gap, the human potential gap, within the next five years getting to 2030,” the President disclosed.
The Head of State explained that strengthening policy interventions as a collective would play a crucial role in closing technological gaps and ensuring that the young population is prepared for the digital era.
“In this region, we’re very close to strategic, important partners; partners that share the same values with us also. And let us look at what is happening in some of those partners: in the UK, 25% of the population is considered roots today — that’s 15 years to 35 years. 27% in the US, and 26% in Canada. In Guyana, (it’s) 40%…if we can position our market, and marry our energy capacity with AI data centres, then we are bringing 2050 technology here in 2027, and we’re positioning the country as a new nerve for strategic development and development,” President Ali explained.
The G-t-E Project consists of five key components: laying of the pipeline to bring the gas onshore; construction of the power plant and NGL facility; installation of the transmission lines; building of a new control centre; and upgrading of the aged power distribution system.
Key components of this G-t-E Project are being behind schedule, but Winston Brassington, consultant to the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, has reported that the initiative is on budget.
Guyana had, in April 2023, approached the US EXIM Bank for a US$761 million loan to finance the GtE Project, and Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo had disclosed in September that the Bank was preparing to submit a report to its Board at a meeting in October. That was after the technical and environmental due diligence work had been done by the US EXIM Bank, which had sent experts to Guyana for these assessments.
However, even as Guyana awaits approval of this loan, Government has already spent some US$400 million on the GtE Project, and could potentially fund the entire initiative if the US EXIM Bank loan is not approved.
It has been explained that the aim was to borrow approximately US$650 million from the US Bank to fund the GtE initiative, while the Guyana Government was expected to put up the other US$100 million as advance payment to support the initiative.