Oil minister praises GNBS for monitoring oil production without independent meters

Nov 18, 2023 ExxonMobil, News, Oil & Gas

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Kaieteur News – Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat on Tuesday praised the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) for monitoring the oil and gas operations offshore Guyana.

The minister was at the time engaging the media during his first press conference since in office when he opted to respond to news reports, relative to the independent monitoring of oil production.  Bharrat explained, “Guyana National Bureau of Standards and I need to mention this, because we have seen a lot of it in the news recently, a lot of issues concerning who is monitoring on the FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel) and who is measuring and a number of other issues were raised but I want to say to you that we have, GNBS has a presence on each of our FPSOs.”

Guyana currently has three active projects in the Stabroek Block, operated by United States oil giant, ExxonMobil. The vessels, Liza Destiny, Liza Unity and the Prosperity FPSOs are all producing oil without an independent meter to verify the daily production rates reported by the operator.

Nevertheless, the minister assured, “We have a staff from GNBS who is full time there, who is actually monitoring production, who is actually monitoring the discharge into tankers and there is a system where I think it’s a four or five tier system where there must be verification of how much crude actually leaves the FPSO and is discharged into a tanker that is receiving it. Even the captain of the tanker has to verify how much crude he would have received. We have real-time data coming in to us from those equipment, coming to the EPA.” He also noted that the operator must report to government.

During the question and answer segment, Kaieteur News asked the subject Minister to say what progress has been made by Guyana to put an independent meter on the FPSOs to authenticate the flow rates being reported by Exxon.

In response Bharrat explained that he believes the GNBS is already performing its function well to monitor the activities of the operator. He however acknowledged that there is always need for improvement and this would be pursued as soon as possible.  “We believe that GNBS is a state owned agency and we believe that they are doing a good job on the vessel but whether we need to improve on it, there is always room for improvement on any system that we have in place so we will look at that and we will ensure that as early as possible we put additional mechanisms to assist in monitoring because like you, we want the best too,” he said.

Since Guyana drew its first barrel of oil in December 2019, the country has allowed production to continue offshore in the absence of a meter to independently verify the quantity of oil being pumped daily by the operator of the Stabroek Block, ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL). This publication was reliably informed that the necessary equipment to monitor the operator’s daily production can cost this country less than US$200,000. A Positive Displacement Flow Meter or a (PD) Meter is largely utilized in the industry to measure the flow of oil.  The meters measure the volumetric flow rate of a moving fluid or gas by way of precision-fitted gears or rotors containing cavities through which precisely known volumes of fluid pass.

Research by this newspaper found that the meters are very accurate. According to Universal Flow Monitors (UFM), PD flowmeters is the only flow measurement technology that directly measures the volume of the fluid passing through the meter. They are suitable for use in oil and gas, water and wastewater, chemical, power, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, pulp and paper, metals and mining and aerospace.

The availability of this technology has nonetheless failed to faze the Government of Guyana (GoG) that is at this time exerting its energies on regulating other areas of the industry. It was Vice President and chief policy maker for the sector, Bharrat Jagdeo who told reporters during an August press conference this year that the government will shift its attention to the monitoring of production after it completes its new Production Sharing Agreement (PSA), the Petroleum Act and its inaugural oil blocks auction. The Publisher of Kaieteur News, Mr. Glenn Lall had expressed the view in a recent commentary that as government focuses its attention elsewhere, Guyana could be losing hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil daily due to its failure to independently verify the production rates.

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• ExxonMobil, GNBS, Independent, meter, oil, production

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