Guyana Oil and Gas News

The first group of Guya-nese operations and maintenance trainees recently returned home after an extensive 18-month training programme in Canada organised by ExxonMobil Guyana.

The PPP/C government has scrapped the shortlist of 19 companies that had submitted proposals to sell Guyana’s portion of oil from the Liza-1 well and yesterday launched a new Request For Proposals (RFP).

ExxonMobil’s refusal to pay two fines to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will see the oil major for the first time being taken to court by the agency which yesterday sounded a warning that it will not be intimidated.

On the heels of President Irfaan Ali’s announcement on Tuesday that the Payara project approval will have to wait on an international oil expert’s assessment and advice,  ExxonMobil last night said that delays will reduce the value of the project and that more than a year had already been spent on the process.

The United Kingdom (UK) still has heightened investment interests in Guyana’s oil & gas sector says outgoing High Commissioner to Guyana Greg Quinn who hopes that this country maximises the support given to the sector from UK’s oil & gas capital, Aberdeen, in Scotland.

Bilateral co-operation between Georgetown and Paramaribo was over the weekend agreed when two recently-elected presidents – Guyana’s Irfaan Ali and Suriname’s Chandrika-persad Santokhi  – held discussions on oil and gas and a bridge across the Corentyne among other areas.

Guyana’s oil reserves and investment potential were yesterday boosted by the Hess Corporation announcement that appraisal of the Yellowtail well and 13th discovery in the offshore Stabroek Block it shares with ExxonMobil and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) has yielded two additional reservoirs.

Even as the EPA works on “tightening the language” for permits so that start-up periods are not abused by companies, ExxonMobil is currently producing 98,000 barrels of oil per day at the Liza-1 offshore well and hopes to meet its 120,000 per day target on August 10th 2020, the same day that routine flaring is projected to end, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Director Dr Vincent Adams said yesterday.

LONDON,  (Reuters) – A group of the world’s top oil companies including Saudi Aramco, China’s CNPC and Exxon Mobil have for the first time set targets to cut their combined greenhouse gas emissions as a proportion of production, as pressure on the sector’s climate stance grows.

ExxonMobil and two of its subcontractors were fined three times this year for minor spills of hydraulic fluid in the offshore Stabroek Block and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says it wanted to underscore zero tolerance for lax maintenance and procedures in light of the large risk that such operations can pose to the environment and safety.

With an energy researcher warning of the potential environmental harm that could result from natural gas at Exxon’s Liza-1 project in the Stabroek Block, offshore Guyana, the company has assured that it has already implemented a leak detection and repair programme that utilises the latest technology.

ExxonMobil should prove it is using efficient gas flaring technology in oil operations offshore and it is also imperative that both Guyana and the company have stringent measures in place to monitor for leaks from its equipment as such emissions have stronger greenhouse effects, physicist and energy researcher Dr Robert Kleinberg says.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being urged to implement a carbon tax on the crude oil currently being extracted in the offshore Stabroek Block by ExxonMobil’s subsidiary Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Ltd (EEPGL) which could earn Guyana billions annually.

-flaring equal to destroying 6.2 hectares of forest per day continuing Exxon’s flaring of over nine billion cubic feet of natural gas since oil production began in December is equivalent to the loss of 4,642 hectares of forest, which would be valued at US$24 million based on the carbon price under Guyana’s forest protection pact with Norway, says conservationist Dr David Singh.

Jose Cardenas, a political consultant based in Washington, DC, yesterday said that Guyana’s current political situation is “troublesome” and it paves the way for sanctions to be imposed and restrictions can also be placed on the country’s oil funds if the will of the people is not respected.

Nineteen companies have been shortlisted from 34 that last April expressed interest in marketing Guyana’s share of oil from the Exxon-operated Liza Destiny FPSO in the Stabroek Block, offshore Guyana, for a period of one year.

Having fixed issues with two of its three gas handling systems and now using 85% of associated gas from the reservoir, ExxonMobil has further reduced flaring at its offshore Liza-1 well project and has started to again ramp up production, the company yesterday said. 

Production at Exxon-Mobil’s Liza-1 project in the Stabroek Block, offshore Guyana, has plummeted from 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) to now between 25,000 and 30,000 bpd as compressor problems continue and the company would not increase flaring above about 15 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Director Dr Vincent Adams has said.

The Ministry of Public Infrastructure (MPI) yesterday said that planning for the use of natural gas from the Liza-1 well began in September 2015 and continues to date even though more than nine billion cubic feet has already been controversially flared  by ExxonMobil.

As ExxonMobil yesterday continued to play up its Guyana investments at its virtual Annual Meeting of shareholders, global environmental and human rights organisation, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) called on the company to heed environmental pollution warnings and immediately stop flaring gas here.