Guyana is lifting its floating power capacity to 111MW with the rental of plants that the government says will prevent widespread power cuts over the next two years.
The government has contracted a 75MW power barge from Turkish firm Karpowership that installed a 36MW barge in May, finance minister Ashni Singh said on Wednesday.
The government has not released the terms of the contracts for the floating plants that are being fired by imported heavy fuel oil.
Karpowership has been given a two-year contract that the government says will expire with the scheduled commissioning of a $2bn natural gas project that includes a 300MW power plant.
The project will be fed by gas from a deepwater block being worked by US major ExxonMobil.
The agreements with Karpowership "will take us just beyond the period when the new plant comes on stream," Guyana's vice president Bharrat Jagdeo said.
The growing oil producer in northern South America faces a widening power deficit as state power utility GPL cannot meet demand created by a rapidly expanding oil-fired economy, the government said.
Power demand in the country of 750,000 people has grown from 115MW in 2020 to 175MW currently and is projected to reach 205MW by year-end, the government said.
GPL's fuel oil-fired output of 165MW "does not allow for a comfortable reserve so we need adequate redundant capacity," an official told Argus.
Guyana's contract for power barges from Karpowership is the company's third in the region.
Six of the company's floating plants are supporting Cuba's faltering power system, while another is stationed in the Dominican Republic.
