TECHNOLOGY-GUYANA: Texas Firm is in

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Bert Wilkinson

GEORGETOWN, Nov 11 1999 (IPS) - Thanks to the abundance of under- utilised land in Guyana, this country is about to get its first commercial satellite launch facility and officials here say that the mere presence of the firm will do for the country what a million promotional brochures could not do – attract millions of dollars in investment.

Beal Aerospace Technologies Inc, the Frisco, Texas-based company vying for a piece of the 50 billion-dollar space industry, has finally been able to work out major hurdles with the Bharrat Jagdeo administration to build the facility in the remote northwestern region near the border with Venezuela.

Turned away by British authorities and environmentalists from the uninhabited Sombrero Island off Anguilla, a British dependency, Beal started looking further south for a suitable location that is both near the equator and is relatively remote in the event of mishaps.

“Guyana does offer all the conditions we are seeking, ” says Wade Gates Beal’s Director of Corporate Affairs.

Once it became clear that the battle to convince the Green Movement that no harm would come to a colony of masked bobby birds, company officials sounded out the Guyana government and found that a red carpet was waiting for them.

Now, just about eight months after initial contact was made, Kellawan Lall, Chairman of Go Invest, the state’s one-stop agency, is reporting that an agreement will be signed any time now.

” The next step now that we have secured the investment is for the company to come here and begin working on the project. We have cleared all the problems that Beal was seeking to have comfort in, including ownership of land, ” says Lall, who is also an adviser to President Jagdeo.

In recent weeks, it had looked as though negotiations would have been protracted, as the two sides had serious disagreements over the ownership of a vast area of land the company wanted the state to set aside.

The administration had preferred to hand the company a long-term lease, but relented to allow it to own most of a plot of 30,000 hectares.

Officials had said quietly that they were quite reluctant to sell such a huge plot to a foreign firm in the high security rocket launching business, fearing that it could virtually become a state within a state.

Some observers have said they believe that at the back of the mind of some members of the negotiating team, was the freedom American cult leader Jim Jones had at his jungle community in the same general area where more than 900 people in 1978 committed suicide to reportedly escape religious persecution.

But the final agreement to be signed soon, has what Lall calls built-in safeguards and strict terms about the use of the property.

Beal, started in 1997 and is owned by Texas billionaire Andy Beal. It wants to become the first private company to design, build and launch commercial satellites..

Launch pads around the world are reported to be booked solid for months in advance. When up and running, Beal says it will launch at least one heavy duty machine into space per month, rivalling the European Space Station in French Guiana.

But despite its smooth sailing here, the firm still has to convince the U.S State Department to allow it to transfer such high technology to Guyana.

Talks are continuing and the plan is to go ahead with infrastructure work while those talks continue.

Beal has also run into serious problems establishing itself in other parts of the Caribbean. Its efforts to set up a rocket manufacturing plant in the U.S Virgin Islands, for instance, has encountered stumbling blocks with the Green Movement and rich foreigners who own winter homes there.

They argued that the intended site would ruin an environmental and historical enclae.

One group is said to have already filed a lawsuit to prevent the firm from setting up the plant, but if Beal does not prevail eventually, it may have to also set up the assembly plant here.

Prime Minister Samuel Hinds says this could make it even harder for Beal since Washington might be even more reluctant to give its approval for both the plant and the launch pad to be set up in Guyana.

“We have to cross our fingers that this does not become too big a problem, ” Hinds told IPS.