PIANC Panama - Agenda

Build with the MOP a sustainable industrial future looking towards the maritime space, inter-regional integration and marine resources in a blue growth framework

The future of French Guiana, and more generally of the Guiana Shield (including Guyana, Surinam and northern Brazil) passes through the development of its maritime economy: a shared belief between the political and economic actors in a French region in search of new economic engines.

• In the short term: The GPM-Guyane is already engaged in its land development program to develop industrial activities and new services; particularly in support of oil and gas exploration phases that will be revived by oil companies such as Total, and gold mining projects.
• In the longer term : Limits of drafts for vessel in the existing port facilities will not allow to benefit from the lower costs resulting from the rise in the size of vessels and the opportunities of the new or improved maritime route, as proposed by Panama Canal.
• In addition, the diversity of local sustainable marine resources (fish, seaweed, renewable energies) represents a major growth potential: so far the lack of security doesn’t allow their development in the offshore waters.

• The combination of industrial activities and services has been identified to give substance to this development:
  • The sustainable exploitation of marine resources (fisheries, seaweed, EMR), which represents a major growth potential, once guaranteed safe operating conditions,
  • A logistical support for oil and gas activities along the Guiana Shield,
  • A regional container hub for all the countries of the Guiana Shield and the possibility to offer an international container hub responding to the new East/west and North/South crossing maritime route,
  • A fourth activity has recently been identified, for which reflection has just started: Fuel storage (LNG, crude oil or refined petroleum, hydrogen) to facilitate bunkering operations and smooth the consequences of changes in energy selling prices.

This platform provides an ambitious response to all these issues:

• • By applying international standards of containerships : a decrease of 30% to 50% of import costs from now by 2030, with a volume seized of 300 000 TEU (vs 55 000 TEU nowadays), knowing that half coming from crossing shipping lines transshipment
  • The development of new and sustainable activities with: :
    • Aquaculture: over M€30/year in new revenue with annual output of 5,000 tons (starting hypothesis), and up to 15 or even 20 Ktonnes / year after 2030, an annual potential of more than M€100/year to run.
    • The OTEC, to make Platform autonomous in term of energy, who will endure like other isolated sites at sea the rising costs of diesel generators, which already exceed €250/MWh with an oil price of $80.
  • By optimizing industrial and logistics systems of 2 or 3 platforms of O&G production next to the current reference to Port Of Spain: a saving of around M€200 over 30 years for the operators (at least one supply vessel of K$20/day).

• The socio-economic challenge of the project, whose investment is estimated at 1.6 billion of euros (1.2 billion of euros fot the first stage) , well beyond the direct benefits of activities implemented on the POMU platform:
  • In the operational phase, the POMU platform will generate over 3,000 jobs in French Guiana, and will help to increase GDP for over 3%,
  • More generally, the lower of import costs will open up the land potential for growth of all countries and regions of the Guiana Shield.
• The financial issues of this ambitious project are to validate the financial engineering approach for an infrastructure of this magnitude (WACC between 3 and 5%), with:
  • 75% of public funds, some funds which could come from specific loans and tools (like some actual offshore wind projects supported by the European fund for strategic investments) or even French and European subsidies.
  • 25% of private funds, dedicated primarily to the equipment that will be set up on the MOP, and whose provenance is mainly outcome of future operators of the platform, corresponding to them to an entry ticket to implement the qualified cost savings for each activities identified.
• The further development of this project, in line with European targets in the framework of H2020 Blue Growth Policy, is to clarify the following points, in an ecodesign and sustainable development approach:
  • Architecture and construction solutions to create and maintain at sea this modular hosting infrastructure,
  • Maritime space allotment policy, complying with the framework directives on the environment and maritime spatial planning,
  • Energy autonomy, from the energy of the sea,
  • Land use planning to allow the installation of this platform (Exclusive Economic Zone)
  • Adaptation of supply chains, including transhipment operations

Functional and financial description of steps one and two of the platform Phase One in 2026