Govt says proposed gas-to-shore project ‘well advanced’

Back in 2018 he had insisted that there be no flaring and that gas be brought to shore for electricity, fertiliser and other uses.

“You have all of this natural gas and it is being flared for lack of a pipeline project. It was very important that the pipeline project be set up and we did have such a plan. Exxon had a team in Houston that I used to meet … Exxon was prepared to move forward but the slowness was on the government’s side,” he said.

“I suspect that there was individual interest on where to bring the pipeline to shore… I was worried at the slowness at which the people in government operated and maybe wanted to influence the project so they could benefit personally. There was no reason for this project to not have taken off,” he added.

He noted that in his capacity as Petroleum Advisor to the President, he had met with Exxon’s team and plans were forging ahead as Exxon believed that bringing the gas to shore would not have been very complicated but they would need to know from policymakers here, where the pipes would land in order to plot the bed and coordinates.

ExxonMobil would have already done an offshore survey of the sea bed so he believed it would not have been difficult after a location was determined.

The APNU+AFC government has proposed that as it seeks to transition to renewable energy, that natural gas be brought onshore in the interim and talks have been ongoing with ExxonMobil to this end. Up to last year, ExxonMobil’s Country Representative Rod Henson had said that the discussions were still ongoing towards this end and that if an agreement was reached soon, Guyana could see natural gas being used in its energy mix by 2022.

According to the DPI, Dr Bynoe reiterated commitment to ensuring that a “state of the art, contextually relevant industry best-practice department” is established to manage the oil and gas sector.

“We are beginning to build out that structure to allow us to not only have a state-of-the-art department but at the same time to allow us to take advantage of the technological advances, the development and articulation of a robust legislative framework and pursue avenues that will allow for greater cost efficiencies,” Bynoe explained.