Guyana’s oil out­put took a dip in March but still rose three per cent over the pre­vi­ous month.

The dip saw pro­duc­tion drop from 648,000 bar­rels per day (bpd) in Feb­ru­ary to 627,000 bar­rels per day (bpd) in March.

How­ev­er, the drop had lit­tle ef­fect on first-quar­ter pro­duc­tion which re­mained at a ro­bust 631,000 bpd on av­er­age, ac­cord­ing to the coun­try’s en­er­gy min­istry.

Guyana last year be­came Latin Amer­i­ca’s fifth largest oil ex­porter af­ter Brazil, Mex­i­co, Venezuela and Colom­bia.

The new pro­duc­er is ex­pect­ed to gain even more mar­ket share this year once a fourth float­ing fa­cil­i­ty that ar­rived in the coun­try this month is in­stalled for the Yel­low­tail project, rais­ing out­put ca­pac­i­ty to some 940,000 bpd.

The South Amer­i­can na­tion, where all oil and gas out­put is con­trolled by a con­sor­tium led by US ma­jor Exxon Mo­bil, pro­duced some 613,000 bpd of oil in the first quar­ter last year, ac­cord­ing to the min­istry’s fig­ures.

The gov­ern­ment has said it ex­pects pro­duc­tion in the last quar­ter this year to jump to an av­er­age of 786,000 bpd, boost­ed by the start-up of Yel­low­tail, Exxon’s fourth project.

The Exxon group is in fi­nal talks with the gov­ern­ment for the re­lin­quish­ment of a por­tion of its mas­sive Stabroek off­shore block that was not ex­plored or where com­mer­cial re­serves were not found.

The par­ties agreed that a min­i­mum of 2,534 square kilo­me­ters (253,400 hectares) has to be re­turned, the gov­ern­ment said on Thurs­day in a re­lease, with­out pro­vid­ing fur­ther de­tails.

That fig­ure rep­re­sents just un­der 9.5% of the Stabroek acreage.

The re­lin­quish­ment was due in Oc­to­ber 2024.

The de­lay, based on the Min­istry’s state­ment, stems from the need to as­sess which parts of the block are ex­empt from the re­quire­ment to re­lin­quish. 

The fi­nance min­istry ear­li­er this month re­port­ed a $605.46 mil­lion oil rev­enue from roy­al­ties and sales made by the gov­ern­ment in the last quar­ter last year, which in­clud­ed a to­tal of sev­en car­goes ex­port­ed from its share of crude pro­duced in the coun­try.

Guyana’s oil is of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est to Eu­ro­pean im­porters.

Sweet, light, and re­fin­ery-friend­ly, Guyana’s Liza, Uni­ty Gold, and Pa­yara Gold grades are the belle of the At­lantic.

Two-thirds of the coun­try’s ex­ports went to Eu­rope in 2024.

And that’s no ac­ci­dent—Eu­ro­pean re­fin­ers love this oil as it’s eas­i­er to process, clos­er than Mid­dle East­ern bar­rels, and not tan­gled up in Russ­ian geopol­i­tics.

Exxon ex­pects to push out­put to 1.3 mil­lion bpd by 2030. Projects like the $12.7 bil­lion Whip­tail are al­ready un­der­way, with gas-to-shore, LNG, and more on deck.

This project aligns with the gov­ern­ment’s re­quest for a greater gas sup­ply to sup­port on­shore pow­er gen­er­a­tion and petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­tries.

With Exxon­Mo­bil’s off­shore ac­tiv­i­ties hav­ing cat­a­pult­ed Guyana to the sta­tus of the world’s “fastest-grow­ing” oil pro­duc­er, the gov­ern­ment is fo­cus­ing on the more ef­fi­cient use of as­so­ci­at­ed nat­ur­al gas.

Guyana’s ex­ports were up 54% in 2024, and the coun­try re­mains on a one-way path to glob­al oil rel­e­vance. The South Amer­i­can na­tion is be­com­ing a crude ex­port pow­er­house faster than any­one thought pos­si­ble.

Exxon and its part­ners Hess and CNOOC have made over 30 dis­cov­er­ies on the block since 2015.

All dis­cov­er­ies to date are un­der­go­ing ap­praisal to de­ter­mine their com­mer­cial po­ten­tial, the min­istry said.

Dis­cov­er­ies deemed po­ten­tial­ly com­mer­cial and pro­duc­tion ar­eas are ex­clud­ed from re­lin­quish­ment.

Non-com­mer­cial dis­cov­er­ies must be re­lin­quished.

Acreage sub­ject to force ma­jeure due to a ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­tro­ver­sy with Venezuela al­so has to be fac­tored out.

Exxon has pro­vid­ed up­dat­ed tech­ni­cal da­ta and a map of the dis­cov­ery area to both the Min­istry of Nat­ur­al Re­sources and the Guyana Ge­ol­o­gy and Mines Com­mis­sion (GGMC), and the re­lin­quish­ment process is in the fi­nal stages, the Min­istry said.

Exxon­Mo­bil Guyana moves in­to new fa­cil­i­ty

Mean­while, Exxon­Mo­bil Guyana of­fi­cial­ly moved in­to its cut­ting-edge, net-ze­ro emis­sions com­plex lo­cat­ed in Ogle on Guyana’s East Coast, mark­ing a new chap­ter in its lo­cal op­er­a­tions, con­firmed by Exxon’s Guyana Man­ag­er for Pub­lic & Gov­ern­ment Af­fairs Matthew Scharf. 

“First im­pres­sions:  In­cred­i­ble that we’ve gone from the New Mar­ket St. of­fice with 50 peo­ple in 2019 to this beau­ti­ful/mod­ern space with sev­er­al hun­dred (at full ca­pac­i­ty). Cool to see the so­lar pan­els out­side that make this a net-ze­ro build­ing. Cof­fee on point — this is most im­por­tant, ob­vi­ous­ly,” Scharf said. 

The Kanuku com­plex is named af­ter the Up­per Taku­tu-Up­per Es­se­qui­bo moun­tain range. The Pakaraima build­ing, named af­ter the south­west­ern Guyana moun­tains, will be ready for staff oc­cu­pa­tion in Ju­ly.

In to­tal, the state-of-the-art head­quar­ters costs some US$160 mil­lion. 

The Kanuku com­plex is de­signed with the tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port the com­pa­ny’s off­shore op­er­a­tions. It has the ca­pac­i­ty to house over 500 em­ploy­ees, the com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly dis­closed.

The first floor of the Kanu­ka build­ing will be des­ig­nat­ed for off­shore op­er­a­tions, with three com­plet­ed con­trol rooms.

These rooms will be manned around the clock, al­low­ing the com­pa­ny to re­duce the num­ber of em­ploy­ees who work off­shore all the time.

This will be con­nect­ed by fiber op­tic ca­ble to Exxon’s off­shore projects to en­sure ef­fi­cient man­age­ment of pro­duc­tion. It will sup­port re­mote op­er­a­tions, and en­hance re­li­a­bil­i­ty through process mon­i­tor­ing and in­spec­tion. 

The fiber op­tic ca­ble, fol­low­ing the same route as the pipeline for Guyana’s Gas-to-En­er­gy project, will al­so en­able the de­tec­tion of leaks and unau­tho­rized ac­cess.

Exxon­Mo­bil will re­cov­er the cost of the head­quar­ters from oil pro­duc­tion.