Bungling and waste do not even begin to describe what we are seeing

Mar 29, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

On March 25, 2025, I read the following in the Stabroek Newspaper “APAN Energy, which supplied 18 used generators from Honduras in 2023 to Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL), has told the utility that the generators would be fixed to the required specifications by the end of this month.

He said that currently, the company is undertaking work on the generator sets, such as testing, to ensure all is well as they switch from using intermediate fuel oil (IFO) to heavy fuel oils (HFO).”

Editor, GPL bought 18 used generators for US$ 27 million in 2023, which we were told would generate 27 megawatts, i.e. used generators at US$1 million per megawatt!?

Editor, these generators were supposed to be refurbished, but were not. About one year after the purchase, a letter writer, Sharmila Ally- whose husband works at GPL- disclosed the following in a SN letter dated Feb.05, 2024 and captioned “Questions on new generators for GPL”: “The government paid US$27M ($1.5 M each) for the order of these 18 used power generators for GPL from a favored company in Trinidad. They were sitting for a long time unused in Trinidad and needed repairs. They were to be rehabilitated and brought to Guyana to produce 27 MW or 1.5 MW each of electricity. Instead, they arrived dysfunctional. Five were repaired in Guyana by GPL engineers and made operational mid-January 2024, producing only one MW current each, as opposed to the expected 1.5 MW as contracted.”

No one was dismissed for corruption, no one was charged for fraud, but one year and one month after the purchase in 2023 we see the above, that the generators were not only not supplied in working order, but were intermediate fuel oil and not heavy fuel oil generators and even up to today, March 2025, they are still not operational. Forcing Guyana in December 2024 to bring a ship to supplement our electrical supply, the ESTIMATED disclosed cost by Jagdeo for the use of the 30 megawatts of electricity capacity from the ship Guyana contracted was 8 cents per Kilowatt. BUT he added, as if it were not significant, that Guyana will have to supply the fuel. So, I asked Professor Google what the cost of fuel was to generate a kilowatt of power. I discovered that this was already calculated by Oil and Gas Governance Network (OGGN) and published on May 05, 2024, in their monthly newsletter. Their estimate of the fuel cost to generate one KW of power is 18 US cents! So, what the Vice President did was tell us that we will only be supplying the fuel, and the company equipment and management costs will be only 8 cents per KW for the rental of the machines. What he neglected to disclose to the media was that the fuel cost, according to the OGGN calculations, will be 18 cents per KW! At a total generating cost of 18+8=26 US cents per kilowatt, when the inefficiencies of GPL’s distribution are added to this amount, only heaven knows what the actual cost will be. So this power ship these people rented for 2 years will cost this country US$50 million, according to the OGGN report, and then sail off and leave us with our corrupt government officials richer and our people poorer.

To summarize the facts now, Editor, we paid US$27 million for generators, and what did we buy? Did they buy brand new flex fuel generators, i.e. natural gas and heavy fuel oil, which can work under all scenarios we visualize our future will hold, i.e. natural gas for normal generation from the Wales plant and Heavy fuel if there is an interruption of gas supply from Wales to Garden of Eden? That would be far too complicated a plan for this government to contemplate or that would not have fueled enough corruption. We bought 27 megawatts of unworkable junk at an exorbitant, almost new price, which NEVER worked since we bought them, and just one year later, we were forced to contract an expensive electricity-generating barge to fill the need for two years!! And two years after the 18 generators from Honduras were purchased, they are still not working! But ‘hold strain’, we’re now told “by March month end they will become fully operational”!

Bungling and waste do not even BEGIN to describe what we are seeing. And as extravagantly as we have seen, the PPP spending was bound to lead to consequences. And it has, since in today’s paper, 27th March, 2025, we now see that the private sector is complaining about the shortage of foreign exchange in Guyana to do our normal business of buying even perishables, for the past several months.

Sincerely

Tony Vieira

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