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Liza, which lies within the Stabroek block, is Guyana’s first producing oilfield (Image: Hess)
Guyana collects $60mn in oil revenues
GUYANA says it has already collected around $60mn in oil revenues under production-shar- ing agreements (PSAs) with the US super-major Exxon Mobil and other international firms.
Finance Minister Winston Jordan said on May 2 that Guyana had recently received an additional $4.9mn in royalty payments for oil soldbyanExxonMobil-ledconsortium.“Allthe monies that we have earned so far, as people can see, [are] going into the [state] account and they canseetheinterestbeingearned,”hewasquoted as saying by the Associated Press.
Some of the oil revenues will be used to shore up the country’s economy, which has been hit hard by the restrictions imposed to curb the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Jordan said. He stressed, though, that no money would be released before Parliament reconvenes and completes a recount of the votes cast in the dis- puted March 2 general elections. Legislators may be able to meet later this month, he noted.
Guyana became an oil exporter in late December, when an Exxon Mobil-led con- sortium that also includes Hess (US) and an affiliate of China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) began production at the offshore Liza field. This year, the government’s share of
production will consist of five shipments, each consisting of 1mn barrels of oil. Georgetown sold its first shipment in February to buyers in the Middle East and the southern US, via Shell Western Supply and Trading.
Guyana earned $55mn from its shipment of light, sweet crude from the Liza field. The government has warned, though, that revenues from the next lifting could be lower.
Even so, Mark Bynoe, the director of Guy- ana’s Department of Energy, told the Stabroek News last month that the country had decided against hedging with its five liftings planned for 2020. Instead, he said, it will sell its share of pro- duction at current-day Brent prices until it finds a marketing agent to advise on the disposal of future cargoes.
Guyana, one of Latin America’s poorest countries, has no experience of oil produc- tion but has seen its fortunes turn around after awarding hundreds of blocks to the Exxon Mobil-led consortium in 1999.
Since then, the consortium has made seven discoveries off the country’s Atlantic coast, the most recent being the Pacora-1 exploration well at the Stabroek block, located around 120 miles (192 km) offshore, in February.™
BRAZIL
Petrobras seen weathering global oil glut
BRAZIL’S national oil company (NOC) Petro- bras may be in a unique position to weather the growing global oil glut, owing to its extensive storage capacity and its exports to China.
The state-owned Brazilian operator is “cer-
tainly better positioned than regional peers,”
said Jaimin Patel, a senior credit analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. 
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