Page 9 - LatAmOil Week 08 2022

LatAmOil GUYANA LatAmOil

Guyana in talks with Middle Eastern oil

companies ahead of offshore bidding round

GUYANESE Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo said its position and allow it to bid in the auctions.
during the International Energy Conference He stressed, though, that diversification would
and Exhibition (IECE) last week that George- be important for Guyana’s oil industry going
town was currently in talks with several state- forward.
run Middle Eastern oil firms about a potential According to Reuters, the list of attendees
exploration for new offshore oil deposits. at the IECE event last week included repre-
Jagdeo declined to name any of the compa- sentatives of QatarEnergy and a six-person
nies involved in the talks, but he told Reuters delegation from the Saudi government. The
in an interview that Guyana was taking this news agency also quoted a source close to the
approach as part of a wider effort to diversify the matter as saying that Oil and Natural Gas Corp.
pool of investors working in its oil industry. He (ONGC), a state-owned Indian company, had
also confirmed that if Guyana were to move for- expressed interest in participating in Guyana’s
ward with these Middle Eastern firms, it might offshore bidding round.
bar groups led by ExxonMobil (US) from the The source did not say whether ONGC was
licensing round that is scheduled to take place eyeing any particular blocks in the offshore
in the third quarter of this year. zone. ™
“I’m not sure whether we would want Exxon
to participate” in the bidding for unassigned
offshore sites, Jagdeo informed the news agency.
“We haven’t made a decision. But they have a
fairly large footprint here already.”
Currently, ExxonMobil and its partners are
producing all of the country’s oil. They were the
first to discover crude in the offshore zone in
2015 and the first to bring the Liza-1 and Liza-2
fields on stream at the Stabroek block in Decem-
ber 2019 and February 2022 respectively. (In
fact, they were the only firm to report a commer-
cially viable find in the Guyanese offshore zone
until the beginning of this month, when CGX
Energy and Frontera Energy, both of Canada,
said they had discovered crude in Kawa-1, an
exploration well drilled at the Corentyne block.)
The vice-president did acknowledge Exx-
onMobil’s success in bringing Stabroek into
production just a few short years after making
its first discovery. If the US super-major could
develop the unassigned blocks equally quickly,
he said, Guyana’s government might reconsider ExxonMobil may be barred from upcoming auctions (Image: Kaieteur News)

ExxonMobil identifies Uaru-2 as fifth

development target at Stabroek block

EXXONMOBIL Guyana, a subsidiary of the US Alistair Routledge, the president of Exxon-
super-major ExxonMobil, confirmed last week Mobil Guyana, made an official announcement
that it had selected Uaru-2 as the target of its fifth about the company’s choice during his address
development project at the Stabroek block off- at the International Energy Conference and
shore Guyana. Exhibition (IECE) in Georgetown

Week 08 24•February•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P9