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Despite the formation of a new company – the Guyana Power and Gas Incorporated – the government has clarified that the country’s main electricity generating company – Guyana Power and Light – remains responsible for administering the forthcoming Gas-to-Energy project at Wales, West Bank Demerara (WBD).

On Thursday, in response to questions from the News Room, Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo said the new Guyana Power and Gas Inc. is simply a holding company and will actually become part of GPL.

The new company, Jagdeo also noted, is 100 per cent owned by the State.

“It is just a legal vehicle for the project.

“Sometimes you need a legal vehicle to develop a project,” Jagdeo said in the first public statement from a government official about the company.

Information about the company was released by the Indian Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Housing and Urban Affairs when a contract was inked in January between Engineers India Limited.

Jagdeo said because of the nature of the company, all directors will be government officials for now.

Director of Projects in the Office of the President, Marcia Nadir-Sharma had signed as director of the new company on the agreement in India.

“It will become part of GPL.

“You can have several companies owned by the government but GPL is getting the power and utilising it,” Jagdeo said at a press conference on Thursday.

One day earlier, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of GPL, Renford Homer offered his understanding of the arrangement with the new company.

“What I can tell you is that GPL is the sole off-taker of the power that is going to be generated…that company (Guyana Power and Gas Inc) is meant to have responsibility largely over the facility,” Homer said.

According to him, the natural gas-fired power plant and the natural gas liquids (NGL) plant to be constructed at Wales will fall under the management of this new company.

“One would expect that there will be some sort of power purchasing agreement between the two entities, of course with the approval of the PUC when it gets to that point.

“All of that has not been concretised but if you look at the broader model, that is where it seems to be going,” Homer added.

The Gas-to-Energy project promises the delivery of cheaper electricity and large amounts of cooking gas to Guyanese. It is set to become the largest project in Guyana.

In December, a contract was inked for the engineering, procurement and construction of the Guyana-integrated natural gas liquid plant and a 300-megawatt power plant.

The signing between the Government of Guyana and US-based integrated energy solutions group – LINDSAYCA – in partnership with a local firm – CH4 Group – took place at the Office of the President in Georgetown.

Overall, the project, which is pegged at more than US$1 billion, will feature approximately 220 kilometres of a subsea pipeline offshore from the Liza Destiny and Liza Unity Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels in the Stabroek Block to onshore.

That allows natural produced in oilfields offshore to be harnessed at the Wales power plant.

According to the WWF Country Manager, Aiesha Williams, the two plans which were funded by Oceans Five – a project implemented and focused on Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing – capture a number of areas that are important for the sector and its sustainability.

“The motivation for our participation and supporting this plan is because it is important to have sustainability so it addresses several areas – IUU, climate change, gender and inclusion in the sector and sets out a number of objectives and outcomes and actions where there can be sustainability, good management, enforcement to ensure that there is a productive sector that really maintains fish stock in a healthy manner,” Williams said.

Because the plans are for 2022 to 2027, the Fisheries Department has already started implementing the recommendations. It must be noted that these plans existed before 2022 but the WWF was asked to revise the plans and update the guidelines.

With the updated plan, it is their hope that better enforcement of the plan will be carried out.

FAO country representative, Dr Gillian Smith (Photo: Ministry of Agriculture/ March 30, 2023)

Dr. Gillian Smith, the FAO country representative, said the training manual is specific to Guyana’s brackish water shrimp production in Region Six and which is expected to expand to other regions.

According to Dr Smith, this is only some of the work that the FAO has embarked on to improve shrimp production in Guyana.

“We know that this industry has a lot of potential and it is also already began to show that potential we are hoping that this manual helps to increase and accelerate the implementation that is being seen on the ground.

“We’ve also been working with them on their efforts to increase the productivity, feed formulation ad wells as water quality. Two very important things that have to be considered when you are moving from a semi-intensive to a more intensive production,” Dr Smith said.

She said the implementation of these plans and the training manual directly deals with the fisherfolk who are actively carrying out their jobs on a day-to-day basis.

For this reason, intense collaboration with these individuals was required to make this possible. She further assured the fisherfolk that the ministry and other agencies that are actively working to strengthen the industry are on their side and will continue such partnerships.

The subject Minister Zulfikar Mustapha said these are very important documents because the fishing industry relies heavily on scientific recommendations and guidance for operations. He highlighted that the seabob production has increased to almost 100 per cent in catches and that the brackish water shrimp production has increased from 10,000 kilogrammes to 90,000 kilogrammes.

A total of $349.6 million was allocated in the 2023 budget to support the further development of the local fisheries and aquaculture industry.

here, and the 2021/22 Financial Statements can be viewed here: https://bit.ly/3M54rZ1 (CWI)

(Reuters) – Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury after a probe into hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, two sources said on Thursday, becoming the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges even as he makes another run for the White House.

The charges, arising from an investigation led by Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, could reshape the 2024 presidential race. Trump previously said he would continue campaigning for the Republican Party’s nomination if charged with a crime.

The specific charges are not yet known and the indictment will likely be announced in the coming days, the New York Times reported. Trump will have to travel to Manhattan for fingerprinting and other processing at that point.

Susan Necheles, a lawyer representing Trump, said she was informed of the indictment but did not know when he would surrender. A law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity, also confirmed the indictment.

Bragg’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump, 76, sought re-election in 2020 but was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has falsely claimed he lost to Biden due to widespread voting fraud and has called the investigation that led to his indictment a “political witch hunt.” Bragg’s office last year won the criminal conviction of the businessman-turned-politician’s real estate company.

The Manhattan investigation is one of several legal challenges facing Trump, and the charges could hurt his presidential comeback attempt. Some 44% of Republicans said he should drop out of the race if he is indicted, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week.

The grand jury convened by Bragg in January began hearing evidence about Trump’s role in the payment to Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election that he ended up winning. Daniels, a well-known adult film actress and director whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she received the money in exchange for keeping silent about a sexual encounter she had with Trump in 2006.

The former president’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen has said Trump directed hush payments to Daniels and to a second woman, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also said she had a sexual relationship with him. Trump has denied having affairs with either woman.

Federal prosecutors examined the Daniels payoff in 2018, leading to a prison sentence for Cohen but no charges against Trump.

No former or sitting U.S. president has ever faced criminal charges. Trump also faces two criminal investigations by a special counsel appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and one by a local prosecutor in Georgia.

DIVISIVE FIGURE

Trump, a divisive figure in U.S. politics with support particularly among white blue-collar and conservative Christian voters, served as president from 2017 to 2021, governing as a right-wing populist. He was impeached twice by the House of Representatives, once in 2019 over his conduct regarding Ukraine and again in 2021 over the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. He was acquitted by the Senate both times.

He leads his early rivals for his party’s nomination, holding the support of 44% of Republicans in a March Reuters/Ipsos poll, compared with 30% support for his nearest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has yet to announce his candidacy. Biden is expected to seek re-election.

Trump on March 18 wrote on social media that he had expected to be arrested on March 21 and urged his supporters to protest to “take our nation back,” reminiscent of his exhortations ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Several Republicans in Congress accused Bragg of selective prosecution with political motivations. “Outrageous,” House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan wrote on Twitter.

Trump in 2018 initially disputed knowing anything about the payment to Daniels. He later acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for the payment, which he called a “simple private transaction.”

In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance law violations for his role in orchestrating the payments to Daniels and McDougal and was sentenced to three years in prison. He testified that Trump directed him to make the payments.

Cohen testified before the Manhattan grand jury investigating Trump on March 13. The grand jury also heard from David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer. The tabloid publication bought the rights to McDougal’s story about her alleged relationship with Trump for $150,000 but never published it, a method known as “catch and kill” used by some media outlets to bury damaging information about a third party.

Daniels has said she had a sexual encounter with Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel in 2006 – the year after he married his current wife Melania and more than a decade before the businessman-turned-politician became president.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 rejected her bid to revive a defamation lawsuit she brought against Trump over a Twitter post in which he accused her of a “con job” after she described being threatened over publicizing her account of a sexual relationship with him. Lower courts had thrown out her suit.

In the case that led to the conviction of the Trump Organization on tax fraud charges, Bragg declined to charge Trump himself with financial crimes related to his business practices, prompting two prosecutors who worked on the probe to resign.

Among Trump’s ongoing legal woes are a criminal investigation led by Fani Willis, the Democratic district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County, into whether he unlawfully tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat in that state.

Special counsel Jack Smith is separately investigating Trump’s handling of classified government documents after leaving office and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.