President Infaan Ali
(DPI- Guyana. December 04. 2021)
Guyana, Suriname, Brazil and French Guyana regarding the regional energy corridor are set to happen in January, 2022. The President shared this in his key note address to the Guyana Manufacturers and Services Association’s (GMSA) 25th annual presentation and award ceremony, held at the Princess Hotel on Friday December 4, 2021.
He went on to add that the development of the Corentyne River Bridge that Guyana and Suriname are pursuing makes way for massive opportunities. Already, the Guyana and Suriname governments have taken steps to procure a sophisticated contractor to construct this crossing.
Corentyne River bridge
“In the energy corridor, we want to have the development of the Corentyne River frontier, and that includes the Corentyne River bridge. On our side, we have tremendous opportunities because of one of the largest deposits of A-grade bauxite is here.
With the energy from natural gas, we are talking about the development of aluminum, linking the deep-water harbour. Now, overnight a project that was not viable becomes viable. The deep-water harbour by itself could not be viable, but the deep-water with this becomes extremely viable and lucrative,” the President articulated.
Recent hydrocarbon discoveries in the Guyana-Suriname basin include significant gas reserves that have renewed interest in the corridor. Guyana intends to pipe gas to shore from the Liza field to substitute its current oil-fired power generation. The Liza field was the first significant oil find offshore Guyana.
The Government is also operationalising plans for renewable energy projects to support its intention of creating a cleaner energy mix. The energy corridor would see the countries teaming-up to share power based on a collective understanding of their needs and ability to supply. President Ali had said that the operationalisation of this plan would require development of local knowledge and capacity in the area of logistics.
The project had been under discussion for several years, as the Inter-American Development Bank conducted baseline and pre-feasibility studies in 2016 and 2017 on what it calls the ‘Arco Norte Electrical Interconnection.’
The Bank had stated that the main benefits of such a project would be lower-cost generation for all countries involved; potentially lowered electricity prices for consumers in Guyana and Suriname; more secure supply; reduced carbon dioxide emissions and export earnings, especially for Guyana.
Mikaila Prince – 
Comments
These are huge pipe dreams in my humble opinion! The incumbent government needs to focus on
1) guaranteeing electric power security nationally
2) upgrading the domestic long-distance road infrastructure
before pushing supra-regional projects. There is for example not enough electric energy to meet the national demand. The same is true for Suriname. Does currently really make sense to talk about an electricity grid linking Roraima via the Guyanas to Amapa?
Just to give you a further example from my last visit to Georgetown four weeks ago. The road leading CJIA into Georgetown is partly in such bad condition that it’s an embarrassment. Ideally, this should be a four-lane freeway allowing rapid transport of people and goods into the Georgetown metropolitan area. Given this fact, is a bridge crossing the Corentyne really first priority and in the national interest at present? Has the Ali administration made any projections of the expected daily number of cars crossing the Corentyne once the bridge is built? I suspect it will be 1% of the traffic expected between daily between CJIA and Georgetown.
My advice is to fix the local problems first before dishing out our big visions for the entire region of the Guyanas. Doing things the other way will end up in a huge mess.
Outing fire in far away places, while dey backing burning (D R)