Even as global fossil fuel exploration, not least the world’s major oil exploration companies, face what all too frequently has been a humbling pushback from the growing army of environmental lobbyists, the membership of which has been buttressed in recent years by high-profile supporters, not least, the United Nations, advocates of continued investments in fossil fuel exploration and exploitation continue to have their moments, the year 2019 decidedly providing much to ‘shout about’ insofar as significant new oil finds are concerned.
Whereas as many as two decades ago authoritative sources in the international oil and gas sector had been suggesting that all of the so-called “elephants,” the mega-reserves of oil and natural gas had been located, reports deriving specifically from the outcomes of oil exploration pursuits in 2019 however, point to the fact that they have gotten it wrong.
So that even as the anti-fossil fuel lobbyists step up their push for the pursuit of alternative sources of energy, the factual bottom line is that we find ourselves in the midst of one of the largest oil and natural gas booms of modern times. It is a boom, the oil & gas sector says, big enough to promote global prosperity and security for many years to come.
Long accustomed to being on the periphery of any meaningful eye-catching global event, Guyana, this time around, finds itself at the very centre of what currently, is an energetic global discourse on the future of the oil & gas industry. The bottom line here is, according to Forbes – arguably the USA’s most high-profile business magazine – that the world is experiencing one of the largest oil and natural gas booms of modern times and the predictions are that the boom will continue to lift the global economy for the foreseeable future.
This news, of course, is unlikely to be met with open arms by the heavy hitters in the global lobby for a sharp reduction in fossil fuel exploration pursuits, though, significantly, and with due respect to the legitimate concerns of the environmentalists, poor countries that are yet to taste real development are, this time around, at the centre of major oil discoveries and the likely growth prospects that attend their good fortune.
At the centre of this matrix is Guyana, which, having long languished in the air pocket of “growth potential” that derived largely from much more than speculation about the country’s oil & gas potential, has finally been pulled from that constriction. Even the relatively modest announcement in May 2015 that ExxonMobil had ‘struck oil’ offshore Guyana, has long been swamped by the reliably confirmed disclosure that cumulatively, the deposits that have been found here since 2015 are decidedly ‘top shelf,’ insofar as the size of deposits found anywhere in the world recently are concerned.
All of this transcends local gossip. Late last year a report published by the Oslo-based
oil & gas consulting services and business intelligence data firm, Rystad, pronounced that oil & gas discoveries outside the United States had reached a four-year high during 2019. It went further, asserting that of the estimated 12.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent found last year, by far the largest volumes found in the “offshore regions” were delivered by ExxonMobil from the Stabroek block offshore Guyana. It is more than fair to say that no other single event had ever quite put Guyana on the global map on a comparable scale. Cumulatively, Rystad Energy reportedly estimates that the discoveries in Guyana hold aggregate recoverable resources of around 1.8 billion barrels of oil.
All this, of course is heady stuff, for a country commonly dismissed by the international media as belonging in the realm of the ‘banana republic’. To say that local expectations have risen and that pipe dreams abound is to indulge in considerable understatement. Meanwhile, as is already apparent in the nature of the national response to the country’s oil & gas bonanza, the learning curve is likely to be steep.
All of this, of course, must be balanced against the persistence of the coalition administration led by President David Granger in holding a ‘Green Economy’ posture, A green economy is defined as an economy that aims at reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities, and that seeks, simultaneously, to realise sustainable development without degrading the environment. How to fashion a developmental strategy that simultaneously embraces its now abundant fossil fuel resources and its ‘green’ ambitions is a challenge which, sooner or later, Guyana will have to confront.
Going forward, however, and domestic political challenges notwithstanding, the national ‘feel good’ sensation shows no sign of diminishing. It seems that these days, every Guyanese is, in one fashion or another, awaiting their personal oil & gas payday.
Beyond the startling recent discoveries in the Stabroek Block, international analysts have now declared the north-east coast of South America to have slipped ahead of the Middle East as well as the Permian Basin in the United States as the world’s most watched oil & gas hotspots. They name four companies in particular; ExxonMobil, CNOC, Hess and the French company, Apache, which they say are likely to benefit hugely from the South America fields if their yield is as anticipated. Having begun to produce crude in December, ExxonMobil anticipates that it will produce 750,000 barrels per day by 2025.
Across in neighbouring Suriname, meanwhile, Apache announced earlier this month that it had made a “significant oil discovery” off the coast of that country. Whatever the volumes, the announcement resulted in a 26% jump in the value of its stocks this year.
It is Guyana, however, which, in terms of the sheer volumes of oil that we now know lie in its Stabroek block alone (who knows what other ongoing and future exploration may turn up) that continues to attract the focussed attention of the global oil & gas industry. Anticipated revenues, it is widely believed, places a country that is rarely ever talked about in international circles, arguably on the cusp of social and economic development beyond what would have, prior to five years ago, been its wildest dreams. The job of realising that greatness, however, still remains to be done.
