Guyana is cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the “most ex­cit­ing pe­ri­od” in its his­to­ry with oil pro­duc­tion an­tic­i­pat­ed to reach over one mil­lion bar­rels a day in the next four years, Guyana’s Nat­ur­al Re­sources Min­is­ter, Vick­ram Bhar­rat told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

“Present­ly we are pro­duc­ing on av­er­age 380,000 bar­rels per day. Our third FP­SO (Float­ing pro­duc­tion stor­age and of­fload­ing) -Pros­per­i­ty-, should be in Guyana wa­ters in my es­ti­ma­tion mid-2023 for start-up and pro­duc­tion late third or ear­ly fourth quar­ter this year and with that third FP­SO it will take pro­duc­tion to a min­i­mum of 560,000 bar­rels a day,” Bhar­rat said.

“We have al­ready signed a fourth pro­duc­tion li­cense that is Yel­low Tail, that is un­der con­struc­tion and that should be here in 2025 and that will take us up to, in my es­ti­ma­tion, close 900,000 a bar­rel a day in 2025,” Bhar­rat said.

When Dr Ash­ni Singh, the Se­nior Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent with Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Fi­nance, de­liv­ered Guyana’s bud­get state­ment on Mon­day he stat­ed that the coun­try’s oil and gas sec­tor is es­ti­mat­ed to have ex­pand­ed by 124.8 per cent last year with a to­tal of 101.4 mil­lion bar­rels of oil pro­duced, com­pared with 42.7 mil­lion in 2021.

This per­for­mance was at­trib­uted to the com­mence­ment of pro­duc­tion on the coun­try’s sec­ond FP­SO ves­sel–Liza Uni­ty– ear­ly last year.

Last year the Liza Des­tiny FP­SO pro­duced crude oil at an av­er­age rate of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 128,000 bar­rels per day, com­pared with 117,000 in 2021, and the Liza Uni­ty FP­SO pro­duced at an av­er­age rate of about 169,000 bpd, reach­ing a peak month­ly rate of just over 233,000 bpd in De­cem­ber.

Last year, Guyana’s Nat­ur­al Re­source Fund re­ceived US$1,099.1 mil­lion in oil prof­it, US$510.2 mil­lion from Liza Des­tiny and US$588.9 mil­lion from Liza Uni­ty.

The Nat­ur­al Re­source Fund (NRF) was es­tab­lished, by the Nat­ur­al Re­source Fund Act 2019, to man­age the nat­ur­al re­source wealth of Guyana “for the present and fu­ture ben­e­fit of the peo­ple and for the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try.”

“We are cur­rent­ly re­view­ing the fifth de­vel­op­ment the Uaru de­vel­op­ment so this is be­ing re­viewed for ap­proval,” Bhar­rat said.

It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that this plat­form will pro­duce an­oth­er 250,000 bpd fol­low­ing start-up in 2027.

These will en­able Guyana to gen­er­ate just over one mil­lion bpd.

But Bhar­rat said this bright fu­ture for Guyana will not be lim­it­ed to that coun­try alone.

And that re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion is at the top of the agen­da for Guyana.

T&T, he said, has a ma­jor part to play in that in­te­gra­tion.

Bhar­rat said Guyana’s com­mit­ment to the re­gion can be seen in the fact pres­i­dent Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali will be de­liv­er­ing re­marks in per­son at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny on the first day of the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence which starts to­mor­row.

The theme of the con­fer­ence is “Nav­i­gat­ing a Com­plex En­er­gy Fu­ture”.

“Pres­i­dent Ali has placed a lot of im­por­tance, and em­pha­sis on the Caribbean and re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and we have seen that since he took over as pres­i­dent. And every time he speaks, he speaks about de­vel­op­ment not on­ly for Guyana but for the re­gion and we see our Cari­com sis­ter coun­tries as im­por­tant to us in this de­vel­op­men­tal process es­pe­cial­ly since T&T is close to us, Bar­ba­dos is close to us, Suri­name is close to us and there are syn­er­gies among us too now es­pe­cial­ly now that Guyana is an oil pro­duc­ing coun­try and there is a lot that we can learn from T&T as well too,” Bhar­rat said.

“We know that a lot of T&T com­pa­nies have al­ready been es­tab­lished in Guyana, ei­ther by them­selves or part­ner­ing with Guyanese here so we have a lot of Trinida­di­ans bring­ing their skillset and their ex­per­tise to Guyana to help de­vel­op the oil and gas sec­tor here too, so we don’t see the re­sources in Guyana as be­ing re­sources to de­vel­op Guyana on­ly but we know that the re­sources can be ben­e­fi­cial for the en­tire Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty and pres­i­dent Ali has men­tioned that he is demon­strat­ing that in the way he is go­ing about do­ing busi­ness ba­si­cal­ly in Cari­com and in Guyana,” Bhar­rat said.

Bhar­rat said he sees it as “build­ing a bet­ter part­ner­ship and forg­ing more in­te­gra­tion by and among our coun­tries.”

“I want to wish all the peo­ple of T&T well at the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence and I hope that we will have a re­turn vis­it,” he said.

Guyana will be host­ing its own En­er­gy Con­fer­ence next month.

Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Suri­name’s Pres­i­dent Chan­drikaper­sad San­tokhi are list­ed as speak­ers at that event.

“I know that we have had a lot in com­mon over the years, we have had a good re­la­tion­ship with T&T and Guyana over the years we have a lot of Guyanese liv­ing in T&T and we will like to build on that re­la­tion­ship and find ways of work­ing to­geth­er for all of our peo­ple,” Bhar­rat said.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian in a sep­a­rate sit­down in­ter­view En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young al­so laud­ed the ben­e­fits of re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion with re­spect to en­er­gy.

Young who will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence to­mor­row said his goal in at­tend­ing the con­fer­ence is two-fold.

“We have been work­ing on the re­gion­al re­la­tion­ship with Guyana and Suri­name. T&T, Guyana and Suri­name in my hum­ble opin­ion have to lead the way for en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty in the Cari­com with po­ten­tial in Bar­ba­dos, they have found some gas in Grena­da that T&T has al­ready signed an MOU for. We have to lead that con­ver­sa­tion and I think we will be stronger, that is T&T, Guyana and Suri­name, work­ing to­geth­er on the glob­al plat­form and in deal­ing with multi­na­tion­als,” Young said.

Young said T&T has had sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence deal­ing with multi­na­tion­als.

In fact, Young said, he has spent a lot of time since 2016 rene­go­ti­at­ing with multi­na­tion­als to the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple of T&T.

“The re­la­tion­ship on the gov­ern­men­tal lev­el be­tween T&T and Guyana is ex­treme­ly strong. Pres­i­dent Ali is con­stant­ly in con­ver­sa­tion, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and we have de­vel­oped an ex­cel­lent re­la­tion­ship with pres­i­dent Ali and his Cab­i­net mem­bers so there is a very close re­la­tion­ship there, one of the clos­est that I have seen in my trans­ac­tions in the Cari­com over the last few years and there is mu­tu­al re­spect and we are here to help in what­ev­er way we can and we will work with them,” he said.

Young said the gov­ern­ment wants to as­sure all stake­hold­ers, that it is com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing to work with them for the de­vel­op­ment of this province.

“We are a ma­ture province which means we have been ex­ploit­ing oil for over a 100 years and gas for decades. It de­pletes so there are few­er re­serves and it be­comes more and more dif­fi­cult to find to pro­duce, to mon­e­tise but we as a gov­ern­ment have shown by our track record. When you ask the stake­hold­ers, we are pre­pared to sit down to work out terms that are ben­e­fi­cial to both sides, the peo­ple of T&T, as well as we un­der­stand that every multi­na­tion­al has to pro­duce re­turns and prof­it but we are not go­ing to give away our re­sources and we will work with them to con­tin­ue ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion and that is the mes­sag­ing that I want to come out in the en­er­gy con­fer­ence,” he said

This Thurs­day’s Busi­ness Guardian mag­a­zine (Jan­u­ary 26) will be a spe­cial ener­gy pub­li­ca­tion.

In sep­a­rate ar­ti­cles in that mag­a­zine, Young tells us how he feels about his per­for­mance since be­ing named En­er­gy Min­is­ter in April 2021, and Bhar­rat tells us how Guyana has dealt with be­com­ing one of the lat­est pow­er­hous­es in hy­dro­car­bons while the world tran­si­tions to clean­er en­er­gy.