Guyana Oil and Gas News

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.

The Ministry of Natural Resources says that the government is “highly disappointed” at ExxonMobil’s failure to resolve a gas compressor problem on its oil platform that has led to flaring of gas and a steep drop in production.

Hoping to further boost local content as all heavy-lifting and storage works will be transferred to Guyana from the current location in Trinidad and Tobago, the Guyana Shore Base Inc (GYSBI) is forging ahead with expansion as it adds two specialty berthing facilities set to cost some US$16 million.

Oil production on Exxon-Mobil’s Liza Destiny oil platform has been reduced to 30,000 barrels per day (bpd) after the discharge silencer began experiencing technical issues during the final testing phase of the reinstalled flash gas compressor and other components of the system.

“Extraordinarily time consuming” is how the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) has described interpreting and enforcing the terms of the 10 Production Sharing Agreements (PSA) signed between Guyana and 16 international oil companies.

The Ministry of Education has formally embarked on its ambitious Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) project which will be presiding over 20,000 scholarships in five years with 4,500 to be awarded this year.

Introduction Last week’s column explained the enigma of, on the one hand, repeated striking downward revisions to Guyana’s expected real GDP growth for 2020 (initially set at 85% by the IMF and Government of Guyana, GoG in Q4, 2019).