A second natural gas pipeline will be built to land in Berbice, Guyana’s Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh said on Wednesday.
The second pipeline would follow one Exxon installed last year from the Liza field to Wales on the West Bank of Demerara. The Wales pipeline supports the landmark Gas-to-Energy project and is designed to transport up to 125 million standard cubic feet per day (scf/d) of associated gas to shore primarily for domestic power generation and natural gas liquids (NGL) extraction. Those NGLs are expected to be sold commercially. The government has carved out an area called the Wales Development Zone, which will be home to an industrial park.
The construction of the second pipeline “will see a second industrial park built out in Berbice,” Singh said during a Qualco event at Friendship, East Bank Demerara on March 27.
The plan for a second pipeline is consistent with the ‘Wales Gas Vision’ presented at the Guyana Energy Conference in February by ExxonMobil Guyana President, Alistair Routledge. That vision anticipates the supply of natural gas to an offshore LNG export facility, and to Berbice for alumina and fertilizers production, as well as data centers.
The second pipeline is expected to handle much larger volumes of gas, likely from the gas fields Haimara and Pluma in the southeastern section of the Stabroek Block. However, concrete plans for the development of these fields have not yet been publicly outlined. Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo reportedly told Reuters in February that ExxonMobil will declare its gas development intentions to the Guyana government by the end of March.
