Power generation paramount for expansion of natural resources extraction – Bharrat

The Guyana Government plans, to expand value-added production through the establishment of several manufacturing plants is dependent on strong power generation.
According to Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat, the pertinent facilities including a gold refinery, bottling factory, glass factory and aluminum plant cannot come on stream until Guyana’s electricity issue is resolved and the price for energy decreases.
During a discussion on the Guyana Dialogue programme, Bharrat explained that moving forwards with such plans now will not aid in the modernization of the country and expansion of the non-oil sector as intended.
As a result, the exportation of raw assets such as gold, bauxite and manganese will continue despite interest in moving towards value-added.
“We have companies sitting on $6.5 million ounces of gold, we have another company on $2million ounces of gold, Omai is back doing exploration sitting on over $4million onces of gold. So, our proved resources in the gold sector to date is $15 million ounces of gold which have already been discovered by large-scale companies… the main reason why we have never really ventured into value added which we should is because of power, the cost of power generation and reliability of it,” Minister Bharrat disclosed.
Minister Bharrat explained that when the Wales Gas to Energy project, which is expected to cut electricity costs by approximately 50 per cent and the Amaila Falls hydropower project come on stream, government will move ahead with its plans to establish the manufacturing plants.
“Take for example the Aluminum plant, it requires a significant amount of power to run an Aluminum plant which we don’t have at the moment but which could be possible later with the development of Gas to energy project, the 165 megawatts from the Amaila Falls hydropower project and additional 35 mega watts from solar as we move forward,” the Minister explained.

Emergency power
In a move to alleviate the current electricity woes across the country, the Guyana Government is moving to purchase power 36 megawatts (MW) of emergency power to add to the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Inc. grid.
This was revealed by Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo during his weekly press briefing last Thursday.
A ministerial group – comprising VP Jagdeo; Legal Affairs Minister, Anil Nandlall, S.C.; Finance Minister, Dr Ashni Singh, and Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar – was established to look into the current wave of power instability across the country.
One of the floating power vessels that is operated by Turkish-based Karpowership
According to the Vice President, the group is currently working on a proposal to purchase “emergency power” to supplement GPL’s generating capacity.
The company that the government will be buying the power from is the Latin American arm of Turkish-based Karpowership – which operates a fleet of ships that generate electricity. The contract is expected to be signed in the coming days and the power installed within the next three weeks.
The Vice President added that most of the terms of the contract have already been ironed out. Based on the current arrangement, Karpowership will supply 36 MW of electricity.
According to Jagdeo, the government was considering bringing in a vessel with a larger generating capacity – more than 70 MW – but GPL’s current infrastructure would not have supported such a massive injection of power into the national grid.
When it comes to the cost of this deal, Jagdeo explained that Guyana would only be paying for the equipment and the operation of the power ship, which amounts to some eight cents per kilowatt/hour (kwh).
“There is a capacity charge and an O&M (Operate and Manage) charge – combined that’s less than 8 cents per kwh but then we supply the fuel… So, they will supply the equipment and operate it and we will supply the fuel,” he noted.
For the past week, Guyana has been enduring a heightened spate of blackouts following what the GPL had described as engine failures at different locations.
With its current challenges, GPL is now generating some 165 megawatts of power. However, the current peak demand for electricity is at 180 megawatts.
The government has blamed the issues at the state-owned power company on several issues ranging from aged infrastructure and systems to lack of maintenance, to human resource gap, and the growing electricity demand coupled with public destruction of the entity’s transmission utilities.
According to VP Jagdeo, the ministerial team is currently focused on ensuring that GPL’s generating capacity is maximized. This involves bringing into operation, the remaining containerised generator sets.
Back in December, 17 generator sets were purchased to the tune of US$27 million to enhance power generation during the Christmas holiday. Procured from Apan Energy Service, these sets were expected to contribute an additional 28.9 megawatts to the national grid, but there were shipment delays and technical issues in setting them up.
Only nine of these gen-sets have been installed before this month. Last weekend, another five of the generators were connected on Saturday night while the remaining three sets will be installed by the end of this week. (G1)