US demands immediate disclosure of details of finds So should Guyana
GUYANA US States, in their dealings with private oil and gas companies, requires that details of finds be immediately reported to the State. Guyana should ensure there is a mechanism that requires the same from oil and gas companies it is doing business with.
That is the advice of Petroleum Consultant and Engineer, Paul Nicholas Ramsaywack. The specialist, who has over a decade of experience working with Exploration & Production operators across multiple onshore US basins, said that Guyana’s regulatory framework should be competent enough to mandate that all is reported by ExxonMobil and other companies immediately.
Ramsaywack made these and other comments in a conversation with Kaieteur News about uncertainty surrounding the gas content in the Stabroek Block. The general public still remains unaware of the proportion of oil to gas in most of the discoveries on the Block, operated by Exxon subsidiary, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL), and its partners Hess and CNOOC. Those discoveries now total over six billion oilequivalent barrels.
ExxonMobil would not release its well logs for independent analyses to be done. Some have argued that the publication of the content of those logs would hurt the oil giant’s competitive advantages in the Petroleum industry. Ramsaywack advises that there be some level of confidentiality, but just for a year. He suggested the State rewards oil & gas operators with public confidentiality for a year, by holding the information for that period. This practice, he knows to be common across US states.
“It allows a first move to be rewarded for their risktaking”, the Engineer explained. He maintained, though, that the State must be privy to all the details from the getgo. “A competent and fair regulatory body is critical.” Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson, in a recent appearance on the Kaieteur Radio show, Guyana’s Oil & You, that he is aware of the gas content in Liza Phases One and Two. That accounts for just two of 15 discoveries. ExxonMobil had claimed years after it started making discoveries that it was still analyzing the contents of its discoveries. However, Suriname’s experience with a hydrocarbon discovery on its Block 58 earlier this month by Total and Apache indicates that the oil and gas contents can be estimated in a matter of days. A 2019 technical report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) states that ExxonMobil’s 11th discovery called Haimara, made in early 2019, is a gas condensate reservoir.
(Kaieteur News)