Guyana is open to work­ing with the re­gion and in­deed the rest of the world in a bid to help de­vel­op its bur­geon­ing en­er­gy sec­tor.

This was con­firmed by Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali dur­ing the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence. Fol­low­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion at the Hy­att Re­gency on Mon­day, the Guyana Pres­i­dent con­firmed to re­porters that he was look­ing for­ward to in­ter-gov­ern­ment col­lab­o­ra­tions.

“Our bid round has just been launched so we will see the end of the bid round what the in­ter­est is, it is in­ter­est­ing to see the bid rounds across the world and to see what the re­sponse is be­cause whilst it might not have af­fect­ed in­ter­est, the bid round is one as­pect of the ecosys­tem.

“It is then rais­ing cap­i­tal and rais­ing funds and how easy it is to raise that cap­i­tal and what is the cost of the cap­i­tal you raised so we have been toy­ing with a num­ber of op­tions.

“We have gone out pub­licly to the bid round but there is al­so that room that we are look­ing for more gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment col­lab­o­ra­tion,” said Ali when asked about the re­cent­ly launched bid round in the South Amer­i­can coun­try.

Guyana’s Min­istry of Nat­ur­al Re­sources (MNR) launched the Guyana 2022 Li­cens­ing Round on De­cem­ber 9, and it of­fers 14 blocks for ten­der in shal­low wa­ter and deep­wa­ter ar­eas. The round is ex­pect­ed to build on the suc­cess of the re­cent E&P ac­tiv­i­ty in Guyana that led to over 15 bil­lion bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent be­ing dis­cov­ered since the Liza dis­cov­ery by Exxon­Mo­bil in 2015.

“There are a num­ber of blocks that are still avail­able and we are hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with var­i­ous gov­ern­ments to see the ap­petite for gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment,” said Ali.

He ex­plained while he was urg­ing for greater Cari­com in­volve­ment in the de­vel­op­ment of the sec­tor, he was open to of­fers from around the world and in­deed did con­firm there were some talks with Asian states.

“It in­volves any gov­ern­ment that has an in­ter­est.

“In­dia has ex­pressed, I would say re­cent­ly, they have ex­pressed an in­ter­est in the oil and gas sec­tor, not just the lift but the en­tire ecosys­tem sur­round­ing oil and gas.

“We have had some ini­tial dis­cus­sions in Qatar, with the UAE so we are ex­plor­ing all op­tions.

“When Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son was there, we had some dis­cus­sions in this en­vi­ron­ment in which we are op­er­at­ing we have to re­al­ly keep as much cards on the ta­ble as pos­si­ble,” said Ali.

He, how­ev­er, did ex­press some con­cern about the re­cent chal­lenges some oil and gas com­pa­nies had been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing with re­gard to ob­tain­ing fi­nanc­ing and made a plea for fi­nanciers not to turn their backs on these com­pa­nies.

“Oil and Gas com­pa­nies are hav­ing a greater chal­lenge these days rais­ing cap­i­tal and we had a re­cent ex­am­ple in Guyana where a loan to oil and gas com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing in Guyana through the IDB was ve­toed and that loan was not ap­proved be­cause the US ve­toed that loan. We have re­al ex­am­ples,” said Guyana, mak­ing ref­er­ence to in­ci­dent which af­fect­ed Guyana Shore Base In­cor­po­rat­ed (GYS­BI), who saw a US$180 mil­lion loan ve­toed af­ter it had gone through a two-year ap­proval process.

The in­ci­dent proved a stum­bling block for Guyana’s de­vel­op­ment in the sec­tor.

Ali added fur­ther con­text, “A lo­cal com­pa­ny that want­ed to ex­pand their fa­cil­i­ty so that’s an ex­am­ple we have on Guyana. But if you look at the Glob­al trends and the nar­ra­tive, you would see, is that there is less will­ing­ness to, or less ap­petite to that is pro­mot­ed to a large ex­tent for lend­ing in the oil and gas sec­tor and even where there is lend­ing the cost of cap­i­tal is very much dif­fer­ent as it was a decade ago or less.”

The Guyanese Pres­i­dent al­so felt while there had been a greater push for en­er­gy tran­si­tion and low-emis­sion fu­els, he was cer­tain that fos­sil fu­els still had a role to play in the near to medi­um term.

He as­sured that Guyana will and has been do­ing their part with re­gard to en­er­gy tran­si­tion but felt there need­ed to a bal­anced ap­proach con­cern­ing the En­er­gy tran­si­tion dis­cus­sion.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, the Guyanese Pres­i­dent al­so touched on the sanc­tions im­posed on Venezuela and its con­tin­ued hin­drance on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s abil­i­ty to pro­duce gas.

He ex­plained that he hoped some arrange­ment could be made to en­sure that Guyana’s Cari­com neigh­bour could achieve its po­ten­tial in the sec­tor.

“I don’t have to speak about Venezuela. I mean you are see­ing a change in for­eign pol­i­cy in re­la­tion to Venezuela from the US.

“What I was speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly about is Trinidad’s abil­i­ty to ex­plore and de­vel­op its to­tal gas re­sources,” said Ali.

His wish would come through just about a day lat­er, as the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment grant­ed a li­cense to T&T, al­low­ing the coun­try to op­er­ate with­in the Drag­on gas field via an OFAC Waiv­er from sanc­tions.

Trinidad’s im­por­tance to the re­gion was not on­ly hailed by the Guyanese Pres­i­dent but al­so bpTT’s vice pres­i­dent Wail Sha­heen who not­ed that the qual­i­ty of T&T’s gas, de­spite it be­ing a ma­ture basin, was al­so a plus in the com­pa­ny’s en­er­gy tran­si­tion mod­el.

“T&T is blessed with the qual­i­ty of the gas that we have. So we have oth­er re­gions that have car­bon con­tent in the reser­voir that is above 15 per cent. We have less than one per cent.

“So that plays a key as­pect in the amount of emis­sions from pro­duc­ing our gas. So al­ways keep that in mind.

“It’s some­thing re­al­ly good that we don’t have that high CO2 con­tent in our gas as im­pu­ri­ties,” said Sha­heen.

The com­pa­ny reaf­firmed its com­mit­ment to ex­plo­ration in T&T.