Some key components of the highly anticipated Gas-to-Energy (GtE) Project at Wales, West Bank Demerara (WBD) are behind schedule but it is being assured that the initiative will be completed in the second half of next year.
This is according to Project Lead, Winston Brassington, during a recent presentation at the American Chamber of Commerce Guyana (AmCham Guyana) Energy Mixer held on Thursday evening at the Marriott Hotel in Georgetown.
According to Brassington, there were some delays with the civil works at the project site.
“Now, we were supposed to be finished by the end of this year but then the site and all of the interfaces and handover took a few months longer. The soil stabilisation of the site has taken a lot longer. It’s been a very technical process. So, the civil schedule is what is driving critical parts. The long lead items are a little behind but not as much as the civil schedule,” he stated.
Initially, the project was scheduled to be completed by 2024 year-end but following setbacks in handing over some components including site preparation works, the contractor – United States (US)-based consortium – Lindsayca CH4 Guyana Inc. (LNDCH4), which was awarded the US$759 million contract in November 2022 to build the Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) facility and the 300-megawatt (MW) combined cycle power plant at Wales – was given an extension to next year. LNDCH4 and the Guyana Government are currently in a dispute over the deadline and associated costs but officials have assured that this issue is not affecting the project as works still continue on the ground.
Nevertheless, the Project Lead assured that “The parties have all agreed that sometime in the second half of next year [the project will be completed] and I don’t want to be too precise right now because of the number of moving parts. But we feel confident that this will be achieved.”
The GtE project consists of five key components: laying the pipeline to bring the gas onshore, constructing the power plant and NGL facility, installing transmission lines, building a new control centre, and upgrading the aged power distribution system.
With regards to the integrated project, that is, the power plant and NGL facility, this has three subcomponents including the simple cycle aspect of the power plant, which is purely gas generation. This will see the project running on gas turbines without the benefit of the heat-recovery systems – the steam boilers – that will allow the plant to go from 225MW to 310MW.
But with the combined cycle, the power plant will recover the waste heat and use it to generate additional power. The third component, the NGL facility, will use the “rich gas” that will be piped onshore and produce byproducts.
According to Brassington, “For the simple cycle, including the NGL facility, we are behind schedule. At this point in time, we expect to be sometime in the latter half of next year.”
However, in order for the integrated project to commence operation it needs to have the gas. ExxonMobil, along with its co-ventures are operating the oil-rich Stabroek Block offshore and is responsible for laying 250 kilometres of 12-inch pipelines that will bring the gas onshore.
Brassington indicated that Exxon is right on schedule, noting “We expect that they will be ready to commission the pipeline and fill it with nitrogen until we are ready to put the gas in. This is going to be completed in the fourth quarter and cost is on budget at US$1 billion.”
Included in that US$1 billion are ancillary works such as the construction of a Materials Offloading Facility (MOF) at Wales, a heavy-haul access road to the project site and site preparation works.
As it relates to the other transmission lines and substation aspects of the project, these too are also behind schedule.
With the power that will come from the GtE Project, new transmission lines are being installed from the Wales project site to the Garden of Eden on the East Bank of Demerara (EBD) and then to Goedverwagting on the East Coast of Demerara (ECD). These will be 24 kilometres of 230 kilovolts (kV) lines – the first of this magnitude to be installed in the country. Additionally, there will be another 54 kilometres of new 69 kV lines installed from the project site to Vreed-en-Hoop, from Goedverwagting to Sophia, and also on the EBD corridor.
“Now, this is running behind schedule but it’s not on the critical path. The transmission lines will be finished by the end of the year and the substations by the first quarter of next year. We have new substations being built; the main one being at Goedverwagting. We also have the Wales Industrial Substation immediately adjacent to the site – just north of it. And we have what is called the Wales residential about 7 km north of that. In addition to that, we’re upgrading the Vreed-en-Hoop Substation,” the Project Lead stated.
With all of this power and all of these lines, the government is establishing a new national control centre to manage the distribution of the power from the GtE Project. Back in July, the Government signed a US$8.6 million contract with Chinese company, Power China, to construct the building to house this control centre at Eccles, EBD. The equipment for the national control centre is being supplied by US-based OSI, an AspenTech unit.
Brassington indicated that “…both of these projects are expected to be completed next year. The equipment will be in place by the first half of the year and pending the completion of the building, which we’re trying to fast-track, we will use the existing control centre at Sophia to move the power around.”
However, despite the key components of the project being behind schedule, Brassington declared that the US$759 million GtE initiative is on budget.
“All of [these works] added up a little under US$2 billion. One billion from Exxon, the rest funded by the Government of Guyana and of that, we hope very soon that we will hopefully get the approval of the [US Export-Import] EXIM Bank,” the Project Lead noted.
