Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo has stated that once the People’s Progressive Party/Civic is victorious at the upcoming elections, then it will immediately streamline a gas sector upon getting into office.
At his weekly press conference on Thursday, Jagdeo outlined some of the plans a PPP regime will put in place.
“We made it clear that from the first week, we have to start talking about where the pipeline would go, and not led by Exxon but led by the Government of Guyana. What are the subsidiary industries around the 200 megawatts power plant we build using gas, what are the subsidiaries? Is there adequate gas to come and build other type of industries – the downstream industries,” he noted.
According to Jagdeo, these are conversations that a Government must have.
To date, United States oil giant, ExxonMobil has made 15 discoveries in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana and while the company estimated that there are about six billion barrels of oil, no information has been shared about the gas content of those finds.
According to the Opposition Leader, the incumbent coalition is uninformed about the sector.
To this end, Jagdeo posited that a PPP Administration will ensure that it knows all that it needs to about the gas content discovered offshore Guyana.
“How much gas do we have from all of the discoveries? It is big enough to have a gas sector developed not just oil and what would be [the] cost of moving it et cetera,” the Opposition Leader stated.
The Guyana Government has indicated plans to pipe the natural gas to shore for domestic use particularly as it relates to the power generated, which would potentially reduce the current high cost of electricity.
A 2019 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report had detailed that “High energy costs remain a constraint to growth [in Guyana]. Plans to use Guyana’s natural gas resources for power generation will help to improve the cost-effectiveness, energy efficiency and sustainability of the current energy matrix while providing cleaner energy solutions. The expansion of the generation and transmission capacity of GPL would help to meet immediate energy needs while renewable energy initiatives such as solar, wind and bioenergy are being pursued.”
At a press conference in November last year, Director of the Energy Department, Dr Mark Bynoe had disclosed that preparations are underway to have piped natural gas onshore by 2023 but the gas will not be in significant quantities for more than a decade, or 2035.
In fact, during an interview on a local radio programme earlier this month, a Government Minister had said that from the Liza-1 Field discovery back in 2015 – Exxon’s first oil find, there is about one trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
But he explained that not all of this is available for use since a significant portion is needed to re-inject into wells to maintain pressure in the reservoir for the oil to come up the pipelines. Additionally, the FPSO (Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading) vessel, including its equipment, runs on natural gas.
While Guyana is still to determine the total quantity of natural gas offshore, reports have revealed that Suriname has already determined the gas content from its find earlier this month.
