Guyana Oil and Gas News

ExxonMobil’s flaring of over nine billion  cubic feet of natural gas could have been avoided had a proposed  gas-to-shore pipeline project been implemented but it was stalled because a plan to determine the best location was rejected by government officials as some wanted to handpick a site, former Petroleum Advisor Jan Mangal says.

Guyana has lifted its second one-million barrel cargo of crude oil entitlement from ongoing offshore production and the oil tanker Sonangol Namibe departed these shores yesterday afternoon.

ExxonMobil Guyana President Rod Henson will be leaving Guyana in the coming months to take up a new post as Vice President, Wells, for ExxonMobil in Houston, with responsibility for all drilling activities around the world.

Former presidential advisor on petroleum Jan Mangal has expressed shock that ExxonMobil has flared over 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas offshore and said that he had insisted in 2018 that there be no flaring and that gas be brought to shore for electricity, fertilizer and other uses.

Through a farm-down agreement with Malaysian company, PETRONAS – Petroliam Nasional Berhad (National Petroleum Limited), ExxonMobil has bought some 50 per cent of participating interest in the Suriname offshore Block 52 which is in range of its Guyana’s Stabroek Block offshore oil basin where it has already made 17 discoveries.

After glitches during production startup saw flaring of over 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas,  ExxonMobil has assured that it will from this week begin transitioning to using the gas for well injection purposes, Head of the Environment Protection Agency Dr Vincent Adams says.

The Department of Energy (DE) yesterday said that the delay in the approval process for Exxon’s third well project is due both to unresolved issues surrounding its development plan and Guyana’s current political crisis.

The Department of Energy (DE) has proposed a list of experts to help evaluate prospective marketers for Guyana’s oil as the current pool of National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) evaluators lack the required expertise in the area.

Guyana’s Liza-1 oil field has produced  over eight million barrels of oil since extraction started last December and its top projected capacity of 120,000 barrels per day is expected to be attained by early June 2020.

Introduction As revealed in last week’s column, thankfully the “crazy” oil price war has lasted for about one month.

As businesses in the hospitality sector reel from the impacts of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the major hotels here have said that occupancy is relatively low but some are benefitting from stays by workers from the oil and gas industry.

Thirty-four companies have submitted expressions of interests (EOIs) to market Guyana’s entitlement from the Exxon-operated Liza Destiny FPSO in the Stabroek Block, offshore Guyana.

Offshore workers at ExxonMobil are placed at a private city observation facility, and must undergo a 14-day observation period before they are allowed to fly onboard, as part of mitigation and rigid safety measures against the novel coronavirus Disease (Covid-19), the company yesterday confirmed.

Contending that the APNU+AFC government is illegitimate, activist Ramon Gaskin, former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran and Accountant Nigel Hinds have written the World Bank asking it to halt financing  to Guyana under the petroleum resources project.

Guyana’s next lift of a million barrels of oil is expected in May, around the same time the Department of Energy (DoE) projects that the 120,000 barrels of oil per day maximum production will be reached, but revenues received would likely be far less than the US$55M for the first lift given the current market conditions.

In a move that appears to have come as no major surprise to the rest of the global oil and gas industry, the US super major ExxonMobil this week announced that it was slashing US$10 billion from its capital 2020 expenditure, in effect reducing spending by 15 per cent.

(Reuters) – Exxon Mobil Corp said yesterday the start of production at its Payara project in Guyana, its third major development in the world’s newest offshore oil hotspot, could be delayed as the company scales back spending due to the crude price crash.

ExxonMobil says that it has put stringent novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) safety measures in place for workers heading to and on its vessels in the offshore Stabroek Block, even as it continues to monitor global low oil prices and the possible effects on the company.

The royalty payment for January from the Liza-1 well operations in the offshore Stabroek Block will see Guyana getting around US$1.2 million as ExxonMobil and its partners lifted some 1,025,305 barrels of crude, according to the Ministry of Finance’s calculations.

The Department of Energy (DE) has seen a flurry of questions since it advertised a request for expressions of interest (EOIs) for a marketer for Guyana’s oil last month and the agency has announced that it had for a second time extended the deadline for submissions.