Environmental complaints against Gas-to-Energy contractor raise questions for Guyana

Lindsayca is constructing Guyana’s Gas-to-Energy plant. In the Dominican Republic, a gas-fired plant it worked on sits beside an internationally protected wetland, carries a lender’s highest environmental risk rating and has faced years of complaints from fishermen and community groups.

GEORGETOWN — The contractor building Guyana’s most important energy project has spent the past several years working on a similar plant on the north-west coast of the Dominican Republic. There, a community organisation has accused the project of damaging a protected bay, displacing artisanal fishermen and keeping its environmental studies out of public view.

Those complaints do not prove wrongdoing, and they do not predict what will happen at Wales. They do make one question unavoidable as construction enters its final stretch: who is checking that the environmental safeguards at Wales are being followed, and can Guyanese see the results?

Lindsayca at Wales

In November 2022, the government awarded the CH4/Lindsayca consortium a US$759 million contract to build the 300-megawatt power plant and natural gas liquids (NGL) facility at Wales, the centrepiece of the Gas-to-Energy project.

In 2025, Lindsayca acquired CH4 Systems’ interest and took control of the project company, now called Lindsayca Guyana Inc., according to the Office of the Prime Minister.

The project is behind schedule. Officials once hoped the plant would deliver power in the first half of 2025. Prime Minister Mark Phillips has said an initial 57 MW should come on stream by the end of 2026, with about 228 MW expected by the end of 2027.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued an environmental permit covering the power plant, the NGL facility, the materials offloading facility, the heavy haul road and associated works. Its conditions bind the permit holder and its contractors and subcontractors.

The Dominican project

Manzanillo Power Land, in Pepillo Salcedo, Montecristi province, near the Haitian border, is owned by Dominican company Energía 2000. Lindsayca describes itself as having advanced the project.

The plant has a net capacity of 414 MW and was inaugurated by President Luis Abinader in March 2026. It includes a floating LNG storage and regasification unit, a maritime terminal, a gas pipeline and a 345-kilovolt transmission line of about 128 kilometres. Energía 2000 says the plant now supplies about 15 per cent of the country’s installed generating capacity and created more than 3,000 direct and indirect jobs.

At the inauguration, the cost of the plant and its supporting infrastructure was put at about US 950 million. Financing includes a US 500 million syndicated loan from regional commercial banks. The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE) also lists an operation for Energía 2000, number 501265, with up to US$150 million in financing requested from the bank.

BCIE classifies the operation as Category A, its highest environmental and social risk rating, reserved for projects capable of producing significant impacts. The bank’s environmental and social management plan, dated October 2025, required Energía 2000 to strengthen its environmental and social management, stakeholder engagement, waste management, emergency preparedness, complaints procedures and monitoring, and to report its progress to the bank.

What the community says

The Centro Bahía de Manzanillo para el Desarrollo Regional (CEBAMDER) has challenged the project for years.

In 2022, the group asked the Dominican Ombudsman to intervene after, it said, the Ministry of Environment failed to release the project’s environmental licence and impact study, in violation of the country’s public information law.

CEBAMDER also argues that the project’s environmental review, which it says dates back to 2013, was never fully reassessed as the plant grew in capacity and added marine and transmission infrastructure.

The group says a pier built for the project inside the protected Estero Balsa mangrove area has disrupted the bay and left more than 100 artisanal fishing families without a reliable livelihood. It says fishing activity in parts of the bay fell by more than 90 per cent, a figure BROWNY TIMES has not independently verified. CEBAMDER has dismissed the company’s mitigation efforts, including the planting of 86 mangrove seedlings, as no substitute for a technical restoration plan.

A protected wetland

Estero Balsa lies within the Humedales de Montecristi y la Línea Noroeste, designated in 2022 as Ramsar Site No. 2497, a wetland of international importance. The site covers more than 84,000 hectares of mangroves, lagoons and coral reefs and shelters threatened species, including the critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle.

Other companies and a state port expansion also operate in Manzanillo Bay, so not every change in the bay can be attributed to a single project.

What this means for Guyana

Wales and Manzanillo sit in different ecosystems and answer to different regulators. But both rely on heavy marine and onshore construction beside sensitive coastlines, and Lindsayca’s role in both makes the quality of oversight at Wales a legitimate public-interest question.

There are signs that oversight is taking place. In July 2026, the EPA and the Maritime Administration Department investigated a report about the offshore pipeline that will feed Wales. They said no gas was flowing through the line, described what they found as a “slight anomaly” and continued inspections.

In October, ExxonMobil Guyana, which owns and operates the pipeline (it is not part of Lindsayca’s contract), said inspections had identified an issue on a near-shore section off Crane, West Coast Demerara. Repairs are scheduled to run from October 14 to around December 1, before Gas-to-Energy operations begin. The company said the pipeline is not in service, is pressurised with nitrogen and poses no risk to the public or the environment.

That episode shows that problems are being found. It also shows how little the public learns about them. The EPA publishes the Wales environmental permit, and regulators have issued statements when concerns surfaced. What is not visible in the public record is the routine work of compliance: construction-phase inspection reports, water-quality monitoring, findings and corrective actions.

Before the first turbine starts, Guyanese are entitled to answers to five questions:

* How often does the EPA inspect construction at Wales?

* What environmental monitoring data must the permit holder and its contractors submit?

* Are inspection findings and corrective actions made public?

* How can nearby communities report environmental or livelihood concerns?

* Will compliance information be published before the plant begins operating?

The lesson from Manzanillo

Manzanillo carried a Category A rating, a management plan and international lender supervision, and community groups still say the safeguards failed them and the information was kept out of reach.

The lesson for Guyana is not that Wales will become another Manzanillo. It is that a permit is where oversight begins, not where it ends. Whether the safeguards at Wales are working is something Guyanese should be able to see for themselves.

BROWNY TIMES has sent these questions to Lindsayca Guyana Inc., Energía 2000 and Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency and will update this article with any response.