'Come join Guyana energy boom'

TT energy companies are being encouraged to sign up for a chance to be a part of Guyana's oil and gas exploration drive.

The invitation comes from a major player in the the South American country's energy boom, ExxonMobil, through its subsidiary Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Ltd.

Esso's country manager and president Rod Henson said TT firms should register with the Centre for Local Business Development in Guyana which is fully funded and operated by the company. He shared insight into what local firms can tap into during his address at the 2019 TT Energy Conference and Trade Show, hosted by the Energy Chamber, Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain, on Tuesday.

Henson told the packed auditorium that Guyana’s reserve of oil equivalent stood in the region of five billion barrels. ExxonMobil has made significant discoveries of oil and gas in Guyana since 2015, and, on February 6, 2018, it announced two more offshore oil and gas finds.

Henson said TT companies interested in doing work in Guyana should keep an eye on Exxon’s social media pages as well as apply to the centre which maintains a list of contractors.

“They maintain supplier quotable, which is a supplier list of a skills set which a company possesses and tries and match companies with the smaller contractors with what they need, so if you are interested in business opportunities, keep an eye on our website page, Facebook as well but also when companies come to Guyana, the centre is essentially the first place that we point people to.”

Henson disclosed that TT had provided a short base at Chaguaramas during Exxon’s initial exploration drilling but this arrangement changed as the oil discoveries kept increasing.

“We were supported from a short base perspective pretty much entirely from TT, however, but now we know we have a long term project in Guyana we have been working to increase our local content there and so today we operate a short base in Guyana.”

However, he noted that work was still being done out of its Chaguaramas short base, such as inspection and well services.

Henson said TT has a “long and mature oil and gas industry” with many capable companies, something which Guyana was aspiring to build.

“There are many capable industries here and Guyana is early in the journey, very early... Guyana looks to Trinidad, they aspire to be where Trinidad is now but they do not consider that Trinidad has taken decades to be at this level.”

Henson also gave an overview of future plans in Guyana saying Esso's development plans were in two phases – one plan consisting of a floating production storage and offloading vessel, named the Liza Destiny, and 17 subsea wells.

He said the Liza Destiny has a production rate of up to 140,000 barrels of oil per day, and a storage capacity of 1.6 million barrels saying they expected “crude liftings” every week.

“We are on schedule for first oil in the first quarter of next year, and like all projects it will take some time to commission all the equipment so it will be a few months before we are up to peak rate.”

The Liza Destiny is being fabricated in Singapore with “sail away” scheduled to take place sometime in July/ August and commissioning later in the year. Well-heads and manifolds are being manufactured in Brazil and were all on schedule.

Henson said both phases are expected to tackle the upper and lower oil bearing sands and predicted that by 2022, Guyana should be producing 340,000 barrels of oil per day.