Page 8 - LatAmOil Week 03 2022

LatAmOil GUYANA LatAmOil

Additionally, he stressed that Georgetown the third quarter of 2022, Georgetown will also
intended to extend the practice of open bidding be offering a site formerly assigned to the Canje
to the acreage that Guyana was slated to receive consortium. Block C covers an area of about
under the relinquishment clauses of the con- 9,600 square km and lies north of Stabroek and
tracts signed by various international oil com- east of Kaieteur, while the smaller licence area
panies (IOCs). “We have already indicated to the covers 1,325 square km. ExxonMobil (US) is
interested company that the government wants serving as the operator of Canje, Kaieteur and
this [bidding for Block C] to be an open process, Stabroek. ™
and this principle will go for how we deal with
the relinquishment for other blocks too,” he said,
according to OilNOW.gy.
In related news, OilNOW.gy quoted
Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo as saying ear-
lier this week that Guyana’s government must
“aggressively enforce” its policy of relinquish-
ment, in line with the terms of the contracts
signed with IOCs. Georgetown must take action
on this front to ensure that the country’s next
licensing round is successful, he commented.
Relinquishment provides for investors that
discontinue exploration programmes or that do
not discover hydrocarbons at all or in commer-
cial quantities within their licence areas to trans-
fer those licence areas back to the government. It
also provides for investors to return sections of
licence areas that they do not intend to develop.
In turn, the government may offer relinquished
areas to investors again – and it has indicated
that it will do so in its next bidding round.
As such, when the Block C is put up for sale in The next bidding round will include two sites (Image: Kaieteur News)

Guyanese inspectors to be responsible

for testing offshore crude oil this year

THE Guyana National Bureau of Standards production. However, it has been working with
(GNBS) has said it is prepared to take respon- other government agencies and partners to
sibility for testing crude oil from the country’s build and expand its capacities on this front so
offshore fields this year, ahead of the planned that it would be able to manage the testing inde-
launch of the Liza-2 development project. pendently. It has said previously that it hoped
GNBS has been involved in the testing of to take the reins in 2022, and it announced in a
crude since December 2019, when the coun- statement dated January 14 that it had been able
try’s first oilfield, Liza-1, began commercial to meet this goal.

GNBS inspectors are ready to inspect crude handled by the Liza Unity FPSO (Image: SBM Offshore)

P8 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 03 20•January•2022