The Guyana gov­ern­ment Fri­day said it has grant­ed a pe­tro­le­um pro­duc­tion li­cence to the US-oil and en­er­gy gi­ant, Exxon­Mo­bil, the Stabroek Block op­er­a­tor for its sixth de­vel­op­ment off­shore Guyana, Whip­tail.

It said that this US$12.7 bil­lion de­vel­op­ment will pro­duce 250,000 bar­rels of oil dai­ly, bring­ing dai­ly pro­duc­tion to 1.3 mil­lion by the end of 2027.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, this de­vel­op­ment will in­clude up to ten drill cen­ters with 48 pro­duc­tion and in­jec­tion wells,” the Min­istry of Nat­ur­al Re­sources said in a state­ment.

It said the con­struc­tion of Jaguar, the float­ing, pro­duc­tion and of­fload­ing (FP­SO) ves­sel iden­ti­fied for this de­vel­op­ment, re­mains in progress.

“This ves­sel joins the Liza Des­tiny, Liza Uni­ty and Pros­per­i­ty FP­SOs, which com­bined, are cur­rent­ly pro­duc­ing over half a mil­lion bar­rels of oil dai­ly. Con­struc­tion is al­so in progress for the Yel­low­tail and Uaru de­vel­op­ments. Pro­duc­tion for these projects is slat­ed to com­mence in 2025 and 2026, re­spec­tive­ly.

“No­tably, oil pro­duc­tion from this sixth de­vel­op­ment will gen­er­ate bil­lions in rev­enue for Guyana, there­by sup­port­ing sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic and so­cial up­lift­ment for the coun­try and its cit­i­zens,” the min­istry added.

Mean­while, in a sep­a­rate state­ment from its US of­fice, Exxon­Mo­bil said it has made a fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion for the Whip­tail de­vel­op­ment off­shore Guyana, af­ter re­ceiv­ing the re­quired gov­ern­ment and reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals.

It said Whip­tail, the sixth project on the Stabroek block, is ex­pect­ed to add ap­prox­i­mate­ly 250,000 bar­rels of dai­ly ca­pac­i­ty by the end of 2027.

“Our sixth mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar project in Guyana will bring the coun­try’s pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.3 mil­lion bar­rels per day,” said Liam Mal­lon, pres­i­dent of Exxon­Mo­bil Up­stream Com­pa­ny.

“Our un­ri­valed suc­cess in de­vel­op­ing the Guyana re­source at in­dus­try-lead­ing pace, cost and en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance is built on close col­lab­o­ra­tion with the gov­ern­ment of Guyana, as well as our part­ners, sup­pli­ers, and con­trac­tors. The Stabroek block de­vel­op­ments are among the low­est emis­sions in­ten­si­ty as­sets in Exxon­Mo­bil’s up­stream port­fo­lio and will pro­vide the world with ad­di­tion­al re­li­able en­er­gy sup­plies now and for years to come.”

Exxon­Mo­bil said the $12.7 bil­lion Whip­tail project will in­clude up to 10 drill cen­ters with 48 pro­duc­tion and in­jec­tion wells.

“We are com­mit­ted to help­ing spread the ben­e­fits through­out the coun­try by in­vest­ing in lo­cal Guyanese com­mu­ni­ties and projects to sup­port the coun­try’s phased and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment,” said Mal­lon.

Exxon­Mo­bil said that pro­duc­tion from the six Stabroek block de­vel­op­ments will gen­er­ate tens of bil­lions of dol­lars of rev­enue and sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment for Guyana. It said since first pro­duc­tion in 2019, more than US$4.2 bil­lion has been paid in­to the Guyana Nat­ur­al Re­source Fund.

It said there are cur­rent­ly 6,200 Guyanese work­ing in sup­port of Stabroek block op­er­a­tions—which is 70 per cent of the work­force. The cu­mu­la­tive spend of Exxon­Mo­bil Guyana and its con­trac­tors with Guyanese sup­pli­ers since 2015 sur­passed US$1.5 bil­lion at the end of 2023.