Four years after it made its first offshore oil discovery in Guyana, ExxonMobil says that it and its contractors have created almost 1,200 new jobs for locals with over 200 of those being held by women and spent some US$119.5 million (approximately $24.9 billion) on local procurement.
“We are very proud at what we are doing. I think we are doing more in Guyana more than any place I have seen. I am really proud of our contractors. We have created almost 1,200 new jobs and over 200 of those are women in the oil industry,” ExxonMobil’s Country Manager Rod Henson told Stabroek News in an interview.
“Since 2015, EEPGL and its major contractors have spent approximately US$119.5 million with local suppliers for the procurement of goods and services ranging from foodstuff to engineering. People are seeing benefits,” he said, while referring to local content statistics. EEPGL or Esso Exploration and Petroleum Guyana Limited is ExxonMobil’s local subsidiary.
Local content has been a major issue here, moreso the lack of a government policy. The Private Sector Commission has said that local content legislation is needed to protect investments in the oil and gas sector here with the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) recently echoing this stance following an Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) held in Houston, Texas in May.
“We, as a private sector, have played our cards and are willing to make the investment, learn and inculcate new behaviours and new standards into what we offer. What we need is that regulatory environment that starts with a policy and ends with legislation that says there is a need for local content in this industry,” GCCI Head Nicholas Boyer had said, while noting that even though there are many examples of efficient local content policies around the world, there is a need for Guyana to learn quickly and implement such a policy and related legislation.
Boyer also said that there is a need for the policy to be in place before first oil in order to stop depending on operators’ internal local content policies, which, he said, is no excuse for the government to not already have a policy in place.
“We’ve invested in it already, consultants and consultations. If this was the private sector and government was being run as a company, somebody would’ve had to answer the questions on how did we get so far and invest so much and not have the policy,” he added.
Head of the Department of Energy, Mark Bynoe has said that the Department was aiming towards completing the consultancy for the local content policy by the end of June, and after that it will be taken for consultations with the private sector and other stakeholders.
Calls to Bynoe by for an update have been futile.
ExxonMobil boasts that since 2015, the company has contributed to the growth and development of Guyanese suppliers and workforce. According to information supplied to Stabroek News by the company, “Presently, EEPGL’s operations in Guyana [have] led to the recruitment of 1,183 Guyanese at the end of March 2019 representing 49% of the project’s total workforce. EEPGL initially started with 43 Guyanese in its operations in 2015.”
“You know our industry is not labour intensive. It is technologically intensive so there is not thousands and thousands of jobs but we will definitely [do] the best that we can,” Henson said.
“The real benefit will come from the revenue from the oil. Really transformative stuff will happen over this decade,” he added.
He said that for the first quarter of this year alone, over 30,000 training hours have been generated by the company’s local workforce.
According to the information supplied, total expenditure with Guyanese businesses has been doubling over the years since 2015, recording US$58 million at the end of 2018 with 499 local suppliers being utilised.
Ramped up
Those figures were ramped up significantly this year and the first quarter alone saw the utilisation of 321 Guyanese businesses with expenditure totaling US$24.4 million.
The company has highlighted, in a Guyana Office for Investment magazine, some of the local content benefits including pointing out that a Guyanese company supplies fresh fruit, vegetables, frozen local fish and chicken to the Stena Carron, the drillship operating offshore Guyana. The vessels, ExxonMobil said, also utilise Guyanese staffing companies to identify the Guyanese personnel filling roles such as Radio Room Administration Operators, Stewards and Painters, among other occupations.
ExxonMobil also said that its support vessels, while sailing under international flags, have more recently transitioned to “training” vessels for Guyanese nationals including officers from the Civil Defence Commission and Cadets from MatPal Mari-time Institute who “have gained experience in roles ranging from engineer officers to deck side officer…”
The company also pointed to the recruitment by its subsea contractor, TechnipFMC of 10 candidates from the University of Guyana to attend training in Brazil.
Further, it noted that its local office is comprised of 70 per cent Guyanese “including two in senior management positions.” Guyanese personnel, it said, “work in the areas of Business Services, Controllers, Logistics, Public and Government Affairs, Safety, Security, Health and Environment.” Additionally, the company said that three Guyanese engineers had begun an international training programme.
Public and Government Affairs Advisor Janelle Persaud also pointed to a recent batch of youths that the company has sent to Canada to be trained for offshore work.
Henson said that to date, another US$3.6 million has been spent in grants “for things like STEM education, women empowerment, youth empowerment, things like that.”
