Guyana Oil and Gas News

Sustainable Environment Solutions (SES) Incorporated was launched in Guyana on Tuesday and has won a contract to manage ExxonMobil’s hazardous and non-hazardous waste.

Although backing a gas-to-shore project here, main opposition coalition partner the Alliance for Change (AFC) on Friday warned that the current plan being pursued by the PPP/C government at Wales is not supported by the research done so far.

Introduction Today’s column offers a few general reflections on the experiences of the 2020 crisis and its impact on Guyana’s newly established petroleum sector, now that we are into Q2, 2021 and, temporally at   least, that year is firmly in the rear-view mirror.

Exxon Mobil Corporation yesterday announced estimated first quarter 2021 earnings of US$2.7 billion, or US$0.64 per share assuming dilution, compared with a loss of US$610 million in the first quarter of 2020, according to Businesswire.

Chief Operating Officer of Hess Corporation Greg Hill on Wednesday revealed that the flash gas compressor system from the Liza Destiny oil platform is currently undergoing repairs in Houston, Texas, USA.

With the overall work of the Liza Phase 2 project 90 per cent completed, the Liza Unity Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) oil platform is set to sail for Guyana in mid-2021.

What has been reported in sections of the media as a strong interest by India, the world’s third largest consumer and importer of crude oil, in establishing a long-term agreement to buy a portion of its oil supplies from Guyana, is being seen in global oil circles as a flexing of what, these days, is its considerable muscle in the oil industry.

So far have we travelled from the condition of national euphoria that attended the May 2015 announcement by ExxonMobil that the Liza-1 oil well in the Stabroek block had yielded the first ‘world class’ oil find offshore Guyana, that last Tuesday’s revelation by the same company that it had had made the country’s nineteenth major oil find barely provoked a murmur from the country as a whole. 

Government will continuously pursue strengthening areas of the 2016 Stabroek Block Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) that allow wiggle room to do so, but it has ruled out a formal renegotiation process.

Government is moving to boost its capacity for oversight of the operations of ExxonMobil, according to Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, who says there are questions about the oil major’s spending and whether the country is getting value for money.

ExxonMobil said today it made an oil discovery at the Uaru-2 well in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana, the 19th thus far.

The PPP/C government yesterday said that it used five pre-existing studies done under the APNU+AFC administration to determine that the gas-to-shore project was financially viable and would cut energy costs by at least half.

A Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) facility defeats local content efforts when compared to bringing pipelines to shore, according to former government Petroleum Advisor Jan Mangal, who favours the latter option for Guyana.

Introduction Thus far I have argued that the 2020 crisis delivered a huge setback to Guyana’s forecasted 86% GDP growth rate modeled by the IMF for that year, in Q4 2019.

Fourteen of ExxonMobil Guyana’s offshore workers have tested positive for COVID-19.

Members of the main opposition coalition APNU+AFC met with a team from ExxonMobil on Thursday to discuss issues relating to the malfunctioning third stage gas compressor.

Having cut production last week to 30,000 barrels of oil per day because of gas compression problems, ExxonMobil last evening said that it has begun ramping up output and that a solution is at least three months away during which controversial flaring will occur.

Guyana has received approximately US$13.9 million in royalties for the first quarter of this year from the ExxonMobil Liza-1 operations and expects to add over US$60 million to its account from the sale of its recent sixth oil share and lift, sources have revealed.