Latest update April 16th, 2026 4:35 PM
Guyana’s oil website missing two years of well drilling data, other critical info
Kaieteur News – Guyana’s Petroleum Management Programme has been falling short of fulfilling its transparency mandate in multiple regards, as two years of well drilling data have not been uploaded to the site.
The Ministry of Natural Resources which manages the website had pointed out last year that it was up since 2021, for the purpose of informing the public about developments in the sector. It appears that, since the website was operationalised, no one has been updating the section on well activities. The last well information available on the website is about the Turbot-2 well, where ExxonMobil announced a discovery in September 2021 – two years ago.
Since then, ExxonMobil has drilled more than 15 exploration and appraisal wells, and continues to execute a very active campaign. CGX Energy’s Kawa-1 and Wei-1 wells are not reflected on the site. Neither is Repsol’s Beebei-Potaro well, which was drilled last year. As for wells in which discoveries were made, there is no indication of the size of the discovery.
Apart from a heap of missing information on well activities, several other sections of the website are missing crucial information from the past two years.
One section is for uploads of Monthly and Quarterly reports of the Natural Resource Fund (NRF). However, the last report uploaded was for September 2021. The website is therefore missing more than 30 NRF reports from subsequent months and quarters. Nevertheless, the updated NRF reports are available on the website of the Bank of Guyana.
One section for Events, lists the latest event as a Guyana Oil and Gas Summit from July 2021, despite numerous other high profile oil conferences and forums organised and/or attended by the government.
Another section of the website, established for Ministerial speeches and presentations, includes only two pieces from Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, from September 2020.
The website, altogether, is in a sorry state. Apart from periodic uploads of procurement opportunities and oil production data; no one seems to have been entrusted with the job of maintaining the information flow on the website, to keep the Guyanese public and the industry in-the-know.
Even with respect to oil production data, the Ministry of Natural Resources is yet to fix its problematic user interface. About a month ago, all of the data had disappeared from the site. After Kaieteur News reported the issue, the graphs were returned to the site. But its functionality was so reduced that the oil production data became unreadable.
Several days ago, the Ministry added oil production data for the month of August 2023, but it was a useless upload because of the format in which it has been presented. The Ministry had acknowledged several weeks ago that there were issues, but up to September 23, the graph interface was not returned to its previous interactive state.
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