The staging of Guyana’s second ever International Energy Conference has, like its predecessor, attracted a surfeit on international media exposure for the country that departs sharply from the accustomed fare of economic woes and political instability.
Earlier this week, Oil and Gas 360, a high –profile source of news and analysis on oil and energy issues tagged the country’s new oil production sharing agreement (PSA) model for reporting against the backdrop of its February 14-17 International Energy Conference.
Tagging Guyana as “one of the world’s hottest oil plays” an Oil and Gas 360 Report focused the country’s preparation for a new auction and more particularly on what the country’s Vice President, Bharratt Jagdeo had to say about the country’s new Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) model, not least its likely state of readiness for the country’s mid-April auction event.
Oil and Gas 360 tags “late next month or early in Q2” as a timeline for the realization of “draft new contract terms” for Guyana’s oil sales, the government here having “made it clear that oil companies wouldn’t be getting what it considered to be a sweetheart deal like the EXXON consortium did.”
The April auction which will see of fourteen of Guyana’s oil and gas exploration blocks put on offer could double the extent of Guyana’s offshore area being exploited at this time.
Regarded in some quarters as the helmsman of the country’s oil and gas sector, Jagdeo is also reported by Oil and Gas 360 as telling the Georgetown energy forum that Guyana could also allocate additional blocks to Brazil, Quatar and India through separate bilateral agreements and that talks in that vein had already ensued with the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.
According to Oil and Gas 360 “the Exxon-led consortium that includes Hess and CNOOC told Reuters that it wasn’t planning on adding to its territory in Guyana until it is given the opportunity to review the terms.”
“While the auction closes on April 14, the blocks will be awarded to successful bidders sometime later in the second quarter. While companies can bid on as many blocks as they’d like, a maximum of three blocks will be awarded to any one company,” Oil and Gas 360 reports.
This year’s International Energy Forum has served to shine a further spotlight on Guyana, particularly on estimates that currently place its oil resources at somewhere in the region of 25 billion barrels, a circumstance which Oil and Gas 360 writes has “already helped the country increase its gross domestic product “by more than 50% last year.
