Suri­name and Guyana have tak­en the first step to­wards achiev­ing the joint ex­ploita­tion of gas re­serves off the coast of the two neigh­bour­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­tries.

“It won’t hap­pen to­mor­row, but it is im­por­tant that we now have con­fir­ma­tion from both sides that we want to work to­geth­er. It could take years be­fore we have found a de­vel­op­ment con­cept,” Staat­solie di­rec­tor, An­nand Jage­sar, told the ‘de Ware Ti­jd’ news­pa­per.

Jage­sar was in Guyana as part of a Suri­name del­e­ga­tion that in­clud­ed For­eign Af­fairs, In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness and In­ter­na­tion­al Co­op­er­a­tion Min­is­ter, Al­bert Ramdin that met with Guyana’s Vice Pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo.

Jage­sar told the news­pa­per that the two coun­tries will joint­ly ex­am­ine a de­vel­op­ment con­cept to make ex­ploita­tion of cer­tain reser­voirs of gas con­den­sates fea­si­ble.

He said this con­cerns the Mak­ka and Kwaskwasi dis­cov­er­ies in Suri­name close to the bor­der with Guyana and the Haimara and Pluma dis­cov­er­ies in Guyana, which is al­so close to the bor­der.

“The biggest as­set of a col­lab­o­ra­tion is scale. By merg­ing, the scale could be achieved. But many oth­er is­sues will al­so have to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed,” Jage­sar said.

Ramdin said that the meet­ing in Guyana “took place in a very pleas­ant and open at­mos­phere”, and that both coun­tries rec­og­nize the im­por­tance of co­op­er­a­tion in the field of gas.

He said there are pos­si­bil­i­ties, and the two coun­tries will tack­le them to­geth­er with Staat­solie with the state-owned oil com­pa­ny now en­gaged in ex­chang­ing in­for­ma­tion with the au­thor­i­ties in Guyana at a tech­ni­cal and busi­ness lev­el and record what the joint po­ten­tial is.

Ramdin said based on this, strate­gies and sce­nar­ios will be made on how the in­tend­ed co­op­er­a­tion can take shape.

“In any case,” he not­ed, “this will have a high pri­or­i­ty in the com­ing two to three months and the in­ten­tion of this con­ver­sa­tion was to clear­ly agree at gov­ern­ment lev­el that this must be part of the strate­gic co­op­er­a­tion in oil and gas be­tween Suri­name and Guyana.”

He said the tech­ni­cal de­tails will be dis­cussed in the com­ing weeks.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Staat­solie, To­tal­En­er­gies and Apache Cor­po­ra­tion an­nounced on 1 Oc­to­ber that the fi­nal in­vest­ment de­ci­sion (FID) for the pro­duc­tion of oil re­serves in Block 58 had been tak­en, Jagdeo con­tact­ed the Suri­namese gov­ern­ment, re­quest­ing that dis­cus­sions be held soon about joint­ly ex­ploit­ing the gas re­serves of the two neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

Mean­while, Staat­solie is mov­ing to­wards a sec­ond FID, name­ly in Block 52, where Malaysian Petronas has dis­cov­ered re­cov­er­able oil re­serves.

There are re­ports that Malaysian Petronas has found an amount equal to more than 400 mil­lion bar­rels of oil there, al­low­ing for a project that would utilise 100,000 bar­rels of oil dai­ly.

Last week, Staat­solie be­gan dis­cus­sions with Petronas to get this project off the ground and  Jage­sar ex­plained that they could an­nounce the FID as ear­ly as 2027 and be­gin oil pro­duc­tion in Block 52 by 2030.

Jage­sar said that, with tech­ni­cal ad­just­ments, Petronas could po­ten­tial­ly use a float­ing pro­duc­tion, stor­age, and of­fload­ing unit they al­ready have for the in­tend­ed project. This would al­low pro­duc­tion to start soon­er.

Large quan­ti­ties of nat­ur­al gas have al­so been found in this block. Staat­solie and Petronas are al­so ne­go­ti­at­ing about this and the aim is to get the first gas de­vel­op­ment off the ground as ear­ly as 2031. —PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name (CMC)