With the country’s economy projected to grow significantly with the advent of the oil and gas industry, better infrastructural planning is needed, according to US Energy Consultant, Edwin Callender.
“People coming down the East Bank and the East Coast, the traffic jams are really terrible…if you had an additional industry put into this same general area…what is going to happen?”
“So, a lot of thought has to be put into the industrial park,” Callender, who hails from a law firm in Houston, Texas, told an oil and gas conference at the Pegasus Hotel on Thursday.
Industrial parks are areas of land developed as a site for factories and other industrial businesses.
There are currently three major industrial estates in Guyana located at Houston, Ruimveldt and Eccles. But these industrial zones are in close proximity to residential areas and it poses a lot of challenges, primarily that of traffic.
“So industrial parks, that is really a key for a country like Guyana where most of the population lives in a very confined area on the Coast,” Callender explained.
With the oil and gas industry developing, he said this concept is even more needed. “The pipelines, where they are going to go, the liquid hydrocarbon storage, processing and handling facilities, where are those going to go?”
The US Energy Consultant urged that these plans should be developed in a strategic way.
“You don’t just say: there is some land over there, I am going to pledge some money, build a manufacturing plant. You have to look at where you want to be to develop the regions of your country and the impact it is going to have on the population.”
“A piecemeal approach to this business is not going to cut it. There has to be some kind of central strategic unit, either in the government, or chartered by the government, that does the planning, and of course, compromised of Guyanese experts.”
