An aluminum/alumina smelter in Guyana
Editorial
Guyana Chronicle
May 31, 2004
THE sentiments expressed by Trinidad & Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning last week for an alumina plant in Guyana will likely fuel debate here about the struggle to destroy old and perpetuate new stereotypes.
While the PPP/Civic administration is forging policies to rebuild the country's infrastructure and improve living standards, so far transforming Guyana from the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere into a developing middle-income one after less than ten years in office, the main opposition PNC, which ruled Guyana from 1964 to 1992, is telling people at home and abroad that the ruling party is running the country amok.
But Mr. Manning's call for an alumina plant in Guyana must also be conjuring up memories of the 1970s, when the administration of PNC founder leader Forbes Burnham devised an ambitious plan called, "The Guyana Hydropower/Aluminum Project."
The plan, published in September of 1979, proposed the establishment, "at the earliest possible date," of a 750-megawatt hydroelectric plant and an aluminum smelter likely to require a minimum of 320 megawatts of power.
The project had been studied by international consultants -- from the United States, Switzerland and Yugoslavia and was found to be "technically and economically feasible."
So what went wrong?
One amazing fact was that although a "basic facts" edition of the Guyana Hydropower/Aluminum Project was published in September of 1979, the document itself was projecting the discontinuation of petroleum imports "as from, say 1985, if the hydro came on stream by then"!
In fact, another document dealing specifically with the hydroelectric plant anticipated the construction of the hydro plant commencing in June or July 1976 and being completed in 1981/82. Interestingly, that second document also projected the aluminum smelter needing some 720 megawatts of power in order to process 600,000 tons of bauxite into 300,000 tons of aluminum annually.
The hope was that the Upper Mazaruni Hydroelectric Project, if it had been set up by 1979, would have reduced fuel imports by over US$12 million or about 13.7 percent of the country's annual petroleum bill.
Several factors came into play. For one, the entire project was estimated to cost US$1,000 million -- US$400 million for the hydroelectric plant and the remainder for the aluminum smelter "and certain other related projects" -- and raising that much money was correctly described as a "Herculean task." Secondly, building the hydropower plant entailed a rock-filled dam about 140 feet high and more than a thousand feet across the Mazaruni River and a reservoir or lake measuring about 150 square miles in surface area. And that meant dislocating and resettling 4,500 hinterland residents -- about 4,000 of them Amerindians -- from at least eight Amerindian communities in what is now Region 7 (Cuyuni/Mazaruni).
We know that the Burnham administration got a loan to start the project, but that the project never got off beyond machinery and equipment being left all over the place and some people being fortunate anough to be invited to draw salaries for work they never did. And thus flopped the project.
The question, 'What went wrong?' is going to have to be addressed by the current administration if it is going to take up Mr. Manning's challenge to build an alumina plant in Guyana in the medium term.
And presuming that the PNC/R is serious about putting Guyana first, it should willingly collaborate with Government on a study of the failed project to ascertain how best the country can and should move toward building an aluminum/alumina smelter.