Let me make this easy for every Guyanese to understand. The pipeline was built. The pipeline was laid. The pipeline has been sitting there, filled with nitrogen, waiting for the plant at Wales. The plant has been delayed. The costs have continued to rise and now, before the system has even delivered its first commercial benefit to the people of Guyana, ExxonMobil is telling us that another round of maintenance will have to be carried out from October into December because an anomaly was identified during inspection.
Nobody should object to proper inspection or maintenance of critical infrastructure. That is not the issue. The issue is the quality of the planning behind the entire project. When you are spending billions of dollars of Guyanese money, you do not build one major component years ahead of another and then leave that infrastructure sitting idle, accumulating costs, while the rest of the project struggles to come together.
That is the epitome of poor planning by the government and every day that poor planning and sequencing continues, somebody pays.
Guyanese homes pay through higher electricity costs. Businesses pay through higher operating costs. The economy pays through lost productivity. Also, through the additional costs of maintaining, inspecting, repairing and managing infrastructure that should have been properly coordinated with the completion of the shore facility at Wales.
So, I want the Government to tell Guyanese plainly, how much has it cost to keep this pipeline sitting idle? How much has been spent on inspection? How much has been spent on mobilisation? How much will this current offshore intervention cost? What excavation and reinstatement works have already been undertaken? How many times has work had to be done around this pipeline? And what additional costs have been generated because the pipeline was completed long before the Wales facility was ready?
These are not technical questions for engineers alone. These are questions about public money. There is also another question that the government cannot continue to avoid.
Why Wales?
The Government chose Wales as the location for this project. It therefore has an obligation to explain the technical, logistical and economic basis for that decision, because what Guyanese have witnessed is a project surrounded by delays, rising costs, technical challenges and an ever-moving completion date.
The Government cannot make the decision, announce the project, promise cheaper electricity and then, every time another problem emerges, point somewhere else and say that somebody else is responsible.
ExxonMobil has responsibility for its part of the infrastructure. The Government has responsibility for the national project. The Government decided to proceed. The Government decided on the location. The Government established the arrangements. The Government gave the country the timelines. The Government told Guyanese what this project would deliver.
So, the Government must also answer when the project is delayed, when costs increase and when the promised benefits remain out of reach and to be honest about what was promised.
Guyanese were told that Gas-to-Energy would transform the electricity sector. We were told it would significantly reduce the cost of electricity. We were told it would improve reliability and competitiveness.
Notwithstanding all of that, Guyanese are still dealing with expensive electricity, businesses are still carrying high energy costs and the country is still waiting for the transformational benefit that was used to justify this enormous investment.
This is where government planning matters. The Government cannot manage a country by announcing projects faster than it can plan them. The Government cannot build a pipeline and then wait years for the facility that is supposed to use it. The Government cannot allow billions of dollars to move through a project and then tell the public simply to be patient whenever the deadline moves and the cost goes up. Also, the government certainly cannot use Guyana’s newfound oil wealth as an excuse for weak financial discipline. Oil money should make the government more accountable, not less accountable.
The more money a government has, the greater its responsibility to spend that money wisely. This is why the Guyanese need a full accounting of Gas-to-Energy.
What was the original cost? What is the cost today? What caused the increases? What has been spent on the pipeline while it has remained out of operation? What will this latest maintenance programme cost? What additional expenditure has resulted from delays? What was the original completion date? Why was the pipeline completed so far ahead of the shore facility? Also, why was Wales considered the best location for this project?
These questions are not political tricks. They are questions any responsible government should expect from citizens when billions of dollars of public resources are involved and this is the part that bothers me most.
The ordinary man is not sitting around discussing project-management theory. He is feeling the consequences. He is paying the electricity bill. The small business owner is paying for power. The manufacturer is paying for power. The family trying to make ends meet is paying for the rising cost of living.
They were told that the oil would change their lives. They were told that Gas-to-Energy would bring relief.
Instead, they are watching billions being spent while the project continues to encounter delays and additional costs. That is not what development is supposed to look like. Development cannot be the number of projects announced. Development is whether the project is properly planned, properly executed, delivered on time, delivered within a reasonable cost and whether the ordinary citizen actually feels the benefit.
A pipeline sitting offshore for years before the plant it was built to serve is ready is not development, it is a warning sign and the Government needs to stop treating these warnings as inconveniences.
Guyanese deserve to know where their money is going, why the project has taken this long, why costs continue to move upward and who is ultimately accountable for the decisions that brought us here.
We have the resources. We have the money. What we need is better planning, stronger accountability and greater respect for the public purse because when the government gets the planning wrong, it is not the government that pays. Guyanese pay and have been paying for this poor planning for far too long.
𝐇𝐨𝐧. 𝐊. 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐚 𝐒𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐧
𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐀𝐏𝐍𝐔 𝐑𝐞𝐩 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐬 | 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞, 𝐆𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲
