Guyana has re­cent­ly ac­com­plished a mon­u­men­tal achieve­ment in its en­er­gy sec­tor, cel­e­brat­ing a new high in crude oil pro­duc­tion of 900,000 bar­rels of oil per day (bopd).

This ex­tra­or­di­nary feat, re­alised by Guyana work­ing along­side Exxon­Mo­bil and its part­ners, has been reached in just a few short years, fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­form­ing the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic land­scape.

The foun­da­tion of this rapid growth lies in the pro­lif­ic Stabroek Block off­shore. Exxon­Mo­bil’s ini­tial dis­cov­ery came in May 2015 with the Liza prospect, and since then, the block has seen over 30 sig­nif­i­cant oil and gas finds. Fol­low­ing this suc­cess, ini­tial oil pro­duc­tion com­menced in De­cem­ber 2019 from the Liza de­vel­op­ment.

Dri­ving the cur­rent pro­duc­tion num­bers are four Float­ing Pro­duc­tion, Stor­age, and Of­fload­ing (FP­SO) ves­sels cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing off­shore: the Liza Des­tiny (serv­ing Liza Phase 1), the Liza Uni­ty (serv­ing Liza Phase 2), the Pros­per­i­ty (for the Pa­yara de­vel­op­ment), and the newest ad­di­tion, the ONE GUYANA. This ves­sel, which sup­ports the Yel­low­tail de­vel­op­ment, con­tributes oil mar­ket­ed as Gold­en Ar­row­head crude.

The com­bined pro­duc­tion fig­ure of 900,000 bopd was achieved just months af­ter the suc­cess­ful start­up of Yel­low­tail, Guyana’s fourth off­shore project.

Yel­low­tail has rapid­ly achieved its ini­tial an­nu­al av­er­age pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty of 250,000 bopd. The per­for­mance of Yel­low­tail, cou­pled with the con­sis­tent­ly ex­cel­lent op­er­at­ing out­puts from Liza Phase 1, Liza Phase 2 and Pa­yara, con­tributed to this sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al mile­stone.

Look­ing ahead, Exxon­Mo­bil plans to main­tain this pace of de­vel­op­ment. The Uaru and Whip­tail projects, set to be Guyana’s fifth and sixth de­vel­op­ments, are each ex­pect­ed to add ap­prox­i­mate­ly 250,000 bopd, with op­er­a­tions an­tic­i­pat­ed to be­gin in 2026 and 2027, re­spec­tive­ly.

Fur­ther­more, the sev­enth project, Ham­mer­head, is ex­pect­ed to con­tribute ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150,000 bopd when pro­duc­tion starts in 2029.

An eighth po­ten­tial project, Long­tail, is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing reg­u­la­to­ry re­view. Should all these de­vel­op­ments be ap­proved and brought on­line, Exxon­Mo­bil Guyana ex­pects to reach a to­tal pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty of 1.7 mil­lion bopd from eight ded­i­cat­ed de­vel­op­ments.