Guyana is pro­ject­ed to be­come the high­est per capi­ta oil pro­duc­er in the world by 2035, ac­cord­ing to Latin Amer­i­can strate­gic mar­ket re­search firm, Amer­i­c­as Mar­ket In­tel­li­gence (AMI).

AMI held a vir­tu­al we­bi­nar on Wednes­day on ad­vanc­ing low car­bon strate­gies in the pe­tro­le­um sec­tors of Guyana and Suri­name.

The com­pa­ny’s en­er­gy prac­tice co-di­rec­tor Arthur Deakin made the com­ment, based on a pro­jec­tion of Guyana’s pro­duc­tion lev­els.

He said Guyana could be pro­duc­ing 1.4 mil­lion bar­rels of oil per day by 2035.

This is con­sis­tent with Exxon­Mo­bil’s ag­gres­sive pro­duc­tion goals. The Stabroek block op­er­a­tor, which has al­ready start­ed pro­duc­ing from the es­ti­mat­ed 10 bil­lion bar­rels dis­cov­ered there, in­tends to have six float­ing pro­duc­tion, stor­age and of­fload­ing (FP­SO) ves­sels op­er­at­ing the block by 2027.

It sees po­ten­tial for as many as 10 FP­SOs in the Stabroek block in the next 10 years, and en­joys the sup­port of the gov­ern­ment in this re­gard.

Vice Pres­i­dent, Dr. Bhar­rat Jagdeo has said gov­ern­ment in­tends to pro­duce ag­gres­sive­ly to earn rev­enues to de­vel­op the coun­try be­fore the en­er­gy tran­si­tion phas­es out fos­sil fu­els.

Al­ready, one project is on stream with name­plate ca­pac­i­ty of 120,000 bar­rels of oil per day. All three of its an­nounced up­com­ing projects have name­plates each above 200,000 bar­rels per day.

With just four projects, Exxon­Mo­bil would be pro­duc­ing over 800,000 bar­rels of oil per day by 2025, leav­ing AMI’s pro­jec­tion well with­in the realm of plau­si­bil­i­ty.

Oth­er coun­tries, like the Unit­ed States, have pro­duced much more oil than 1.4 mil­lion bar­rels per day. How­ev­er, Guyana is top of the pile on a per capi­ta ba­sis, be­cause of its very small pop­u­la­tion.

Fea­tures that make Guyana at­trac­tive in­clude the very low breakeven costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the pro­duc­tion of the coun­try’s crude, which are in the range of US$25 and US$35, some of the low­est in the world.

Guyana’s oil is al­so light (mean­ing low den­si­ty) and sweet (low sul­phur con­tent), which makes it not just cheap to pro­duce, but less dirty than oth­er fos­sil fu­els.

Exxon­Mo­bil has al­ready con­firmed that Guyana’s re­source es­ti­mate has ex­ceed­ed 10 bil­lion oil-equiv­a­lent bar­rels. The Stabroek block could have 10 bil­lion more.

Deakin said that 20 per cent of the 10 bil­lion bar­rels es­ti­mate is gas, adding that AMI sees Guyana be­com­ing a gas ex­port­ing hub for CARI­COM.

“Gas is go­ing to be a tremen­dous mon­eti­sa­tion op­por­tu­ni­ty in Guyana,” he said.

Am­bas­sador Rudy In­sanal­ly, a ca­reer diplo­mat, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the AMI dis­cus­sion.

He said there is great ex­cite­ment in Guyana about the op­por­tu­ni­ties the in­dus­try pro­vides, but due to long­stand­ing so­ci­etal is­sues and the ex­pe­ri­ences of oth­er coun­tries, there is ap­pre­hen­sion too.

In­sanal­ly said the PPP/C Gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es the chal­lenges that ex­ist and has an am­bi­tious agen­da to iron them out.

Source: https://dpi.gov.gy/