At his press conference on Monday, President Ali sought to paint a dire picture about the generating capacity of GPL and how dangerously close it was to peak demand so as to leave the country without a spinning reserve.
He based his concerns on a report produced by Dominican Republic company InterEnergy, which on the basis of parts of a summary that was read out by the President, should be called upon to address what it has really done to earn its two-year, US$15.6 million, single-sourced management contract and whether it should continue to be contracted by GPL.
But back to the President. His portrayal of the situation was as if he had arrived at the Office of the President this week. We all know that was not the case. After having to be aided by so many groups to get into office on August 2nd, 2020, the Ali administration continued from where its predecessors over the last five decades had left off. While GPL has added enormously to its power generating capacity with the money accruing to the country its transmission and distribution system remains in disarray and prone to the numerous `system disturbances’ that have infuriated the populace. Its losses both from and line and commercial sources continue to be wholly unacceptable and subject to heavy fines if the Public Utilities Commission would only do its work.
President Ali made it seem as if he bore no responsibility for the fact that current generation – in the paraphrasing of a GPL executive – was running neck and neck with the peak demand. It has already been pointed out by many commentators that GPL’s own projections had envisaged that generation would have been outstripped at this time.
So what did the government do? Did it twiddle its thumbs and do nothing? To the contrary, it acted but did it do so judiciously? In 2020 it immediately embarked upon organizing a costly and still to be tested gas-to-energy project which was to begin producing power – 300 megawatts of it – by 2024 or even earlier based on optimistic projections. If the project had already delivered the promised 300 megawatts or even half of that President Ali would not have had to bemoan the tight margins of generation. As a matter of fact he would have been able to proclaim triumphantly that he had delivered the promised power together with a 50% cut in the tariffs long promised to the Guyanese people.
Let’s go over the numbers here. The President on Monday said that the peak demand in 2024 was 205 MW. In 2026 so far it has grown to 242.6 MW. The President appeared to have experienced no shame over the fact that the estimated US$2b gas-to-energy project has failed for at least two years to deliver 300 MW of power. Had it fulfilled its promise, generation today would have been comfortably over 500 MW, with sufficient spinning reserves to catapult the country into places not travelled before.
For President Ali to conveniently ignore this is most disingenuous. He even lamented the generation insufficiency on the Essequibo Coast, a relatively small user of electricity. Why in six years did two Ali governments fail to secure the power demand on the Essequibo Coast?
Accountability in government matters whether it be the MV Barima or the long-delayed gas-to-energy project. So when he stood on Monday before the media corps President Ali should have begun his presentation by saying that generation was faltering below peak demand and this was as a result of a failed promise for which he took full responsibility. No such thing happened. Instead, there was bluster and pure bamboozlement.
The prime responsibility for the present parlous state of the electricity sector rests in various grades with President Ali, Vice President Jagdeo, the czar of the gas-to-energy project Winston Brassington, the Gas-to-Energy contractor Lindsayca and the Guyana Power and Light and its leading lights.
President Ali must not take the people of this country for fools. He must own up to the responsibilities of the presidency and this gargantuan project which is yet to deliver one megawatt of power two years after it was promised.
In the interim, one hopes that the President will not seek to cover this failure that his government is wholly responsible for by engaging in another opaque contract for new generators. The country will have to bear its chafe for this disgraceful performance by the government in getting the gas-to-energy project going. The buck ultimately rests with the President on this score. There must be conservation of power particularly among large users to ease the burden on the power grid.
The Ali administration should total up the extra cost to the country from the hiring of the Turkish power ships in shadowy deals and the purchase of Heavy Fuel Oils for GPL generators, some of which could have been decommissioned if the 300 MW from the gas-to-energy project was added to the grid.
There were other discomfiting aspects of the President’s remarks on the electricity sector to make one wonder at the quality of management of the country’s affairs. He boasted about how consumers had not had to pay more for power due to the pumped up energy prices from the disastrous US-Israeli war on Iran. It is one thing to shield the ordinary consumer from the travails of war they have no responsibility for but quite another to pass on these subsidies – to take an extreme example – to ExxonMobil which is earning a windfall from the higher oil prices. This is a further sign of all of the worst manifestations of the oil curse – the wanton wastage of monies coming into the country for its people and future generations.
President Ali’s conduct on Monday exemplified why poor governance continues to prevail at all parts of the public sector: there is no accountability for failure but blame shifting and blatant denial.
Discussion