Selling power to Guyana to be hard for Brazil

- Guyana wants to buy electricity from neighboring Brazil but Brasilia's ambassador to Guyana, Ney Do Prado Dieguez, said recently that reaching a power-purchase agreement was not a foregone conclusion.

Dieguez said the existing accord between Venezuela and Brazil would have to be re-negotiated before Brasilia could acquire more power from the Guri Dam to sell to Guyana.

"It's not very easy to do because we have international agreements with Venezuela and so we would have to negotiate this in a tripartite way," the Brazilian envoy said.

The 4,000 residents of the Guyanese township of Lethem near the Guyana-Brazil border presently are getting two six-hour periods of electricity from a diesel generator after the nearby three-year-old Chinese-made hydroelectricity plant was heavily damaged more than six weeks ago by a mudslide caused by heavy rain.

With repairs to the hydroelectric dam expected to take at least one year, Guyana Prime Minister Samuel Hinds has said the government was exploring the possibility of connecting the Lethem power grid to the Brazilian grid in Bon Fin across the Takatu River that forms the countries' mutual border.

While willing to explore any possibilities of selling power to Lethem, the Brazilian ambassador said the power available to Bon Fin in Roraima State was "very limited ... (and) not very cheap."

"It's a question of conducting a study. A lot of people in the area are being affected," Dieguez said.

The government is conducting geological and topographical surveys at the Moco Moco hydroelectricity plant, before a team of Chinese engineers arrives here in about six weeks.