THE SIX MONTHS HE DIDN’T MENTION

 THE SIX MONTHS HE DIDN’T MENTION

OPINION BY: Hem Kumar September 2026

President Ali spent a lengthy interview cataloguing every weakness in Guyana’s electricity system — except the US$759 million one bearing his own name

PRESIDENT DR. IRFAAN ALI wants Guyanese to understand that the next six months are critical. In a recent sit-down with News Room, he walked through nearly every strand of the country’s electricity crisis: units coming offline for overhaul, an estimated US$800 million required over five years just for transmission and distribution, 25 to 27 megawatts of stranded capacity in Essequibo, engagement with Qatar on financing, and recommendations from InterEnergy on how to fix what he called gaps in GPL’s “technical expertise.” He said he was “frustrated.” He said the government was “not satisfied.” 

What he did not say — in an interview built entirely around the question of why the lights keep failing — is Wales. Or Gas-to-Energy. Or Lindsayca. The single largest infrastructure undertaking in Guyana’s history — the project his own government promised would cut electricity costs in half by 2024; does not appear in his account of why electricity costs have not been cut in half.

A Pattern, Not an Omission

This publication has tracked the Wales Gas-to-Energy project’s slide from a 2024 completion promise through four successive revised timelines, a confidential arbitration award the Prime Minister denied existed before admitting it did, and a two-year delay now estimated to cost the country roughly US$884 million above the plants’ original cost. None of that is in dispute inside government. What is notable is who says it. The reassurances; no extra payment under discussion, some communities already receiving phased reductions — carry the President’s name. The numbers; the revised timelines, the contractor’s request for another US$170 million, the shift from fixed-price to cost-plus — are delivered by Prime Minister Phillips, Minister Indar, or task force head Winston Brassington. It is opposition MP Sherod Duncan, not the government, who has had to point out publicly that 57 megawatts of turbine testing is not delivery of the 300 megawatts promised.

That division of labor is not accidental. It is the same architecture this publication has documented elsewhere: a government that announces reviews it does not enforce, appoints reshuffles it later re-announces as new, and stages consultations in place of consequence. GTE fits the mould precisely; the President is present for the vision and the reassurance, and absent for the reckoning.

Who Pays For This

The people who cannot afford this arrangement are the ones reading electricity bills that were supposed to have fallen by half two years ago. Every month GTE slips is a month GPL keeps burning Heavy Fuel Oil and renting powerships at a premium the state has quietly absorbed into an import bill nobody campaigns on. The US$800 million transmission-and-distribution ask the President raised in this interview is real, and it is separate from — and additional to — the money already sunk into Wales. Guyanese are being asked to accept both bills without ever being told, by the man who signed the original promise, why the first one has not yet paid off.

A president who can itemize Essequibo’s stranded megawatts down to the decimal, and describe in detail his engagement with Qatari financiers, has the capacity to explain Wales. That he consistently chooses not to is itself the finding.

 Sidebar — Claim vs. Record

What the President said, set against the government’s own public record.

— THE BOARD

Sources: News Room (Ali interview); Office of the Prime Minister / DPI press statements (May 2026); Kaieteur News (June 12, Sept 6, Sept 15, 2026); Demerara Waves (Sept 8, 2026); Rio Times (Sept 2026); Guyana Chronicle (Sept 11, 2026).