Oil production scheduled for March 2020

DPI, Guyana, Thursday, December 28, 2017

The United States Oil and Gas Giant ExxonMobil today announced that it is likely to commence oil production by March 2020.

This is according to Exxon’s Country Manager Rod Henson during a press conference at the Marriot Hotel where contents of the Stabroek Petroleum Agreement between the oil company and the Government of Guyana were shared.

Guyana and ExxonMobil entered into an agreement in July 2016 and will see Guyana receiving a 50/50 profit and a two percent royalty.  Oil from just the Liza Phase One could be over US$1.5B after five years and over $7B over the life of the project.

“We are estimating around March 2020 right now. That’s when production will start, and it will be somewhere between 100,000 and 120000 barrels a day and we continue to try to accelerate on that. I’ll tell you though, we are trying to do this as we safely can,” Henson told local journalists.

The oil production in 2020 will represent only a fraction of the Liza field, Henson said.

“Liza One was the discovery well and since we drilled Liza Two. Three and Four which helped us to appraise the size of the field Phase One is going to include seventeen wells actually. It will develop part not all of the Liza field.”

Meanwhile, defending the US$18M bonus and the company’s hesitation to make that detail public, Henson reminded that the oil industry is a competitive one, where commercial information is not generally disclosed.

“It is a matter of policy that we don’t talk about in our agreement unless everybody does. We certainly support transparency that is why we are an active member of organisations like EITI which, through that organization, we ensure all is disclosed equally. We are a commercial enterprise and we have competitors and learning bits of information about how other negotiations have worked or how our negotiations work, the things that we value provide kind of intellectual property to competitors,” he said, adding that the country supports consistently applied transparency.

Adding to the conversation, Exxon’s Senior Director, Public and Government Affairs Kimberly Brassington explained that the company only disclose details of its contracts at the lead of the respective government.

“We follow the lead of the government. If that’s a policy of the law, we absolutely comply with that. In this case, it was not the practice. It is now, and the contract is full disclosure,” she said.

 

By: Alexis Rodney

 

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