GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — After Chinese state firms won a string of large state contracts in Guyana, an American company has sealed a $760 million deal to build two plants for using natural gas from offshore oil fields to produce electricity.
Houston-based Lindsayca and CH-4 of Puerto Rico are partnering to construct a 300-megawatt power plant on Guyana’s west coast and a plant to provide it with gas now being mostly burned off by a consortium led by ExxonMobil developing commercial quantities of oil and gas found in 2015.
Once the plants are completed over the next two years, much of the gas from at least three oilfields scheduled to be in operation would be piped ashore to be converted to electricity.
That should help Guyana’s residents who have experienced decades of rolling blackouts and it will cut costs by lessening the need for expensive fuel imports to fire current power plants, President Irfaan Ali said at a contract signing ceremony late Tuesday.
At the ceremony, U.S. Ambassador Sarah Ann Lynch said she hopes the deal will encourage other American companies to bid on large state and private sector contracts in Guyana.
Chinese state companies have been winning hundreds of millions of dollars in multiple projects in the former British colony, including a $200 million project to modernize the local airport, lengthen the runway from 7,400 feet to nearly 11,000 and install more than a half dozen boarding bridges.
Earlier this year, China Railway Construction won a $260 million bid to build a four-lane bridge over Georgetown Harbor connecting the east and west shores. It also won a $184 million contract to widen and modernize the main east coast highway connecting the Guyana’s capital with neighboring Suriname.
Of the six companies bidding to construct a border bridge between Guyana and Suriname, five are Chinese and one is Dutch.
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