Exxon eight new discoveries is possibly total oil produced in T&T in 100 years – Opposition

Apr 09, 2024 ExxonMobil, News, Oil & Gas

---

By Davina Bagot

Kaieteur News – The fact that the government of Guyana is aware of the country’s oil reserves but is hiding this information should disturb each citizen.

This is according to the Opposition’s spokesperson on the Petroleum sector, Elson Low.

During the Leader of the Opposition’s weekly press conference on Thursday, Low highlighted that despite eight new discoveries were announced by ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL) since the country’s last resource update in April 2022, the government continues the hide the reserves.

It was the Chief Policymaker for the oil and gas sector, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo who confirmed this state of affairs at his March 21, 2024 Press Conference. He said that the government has been receiving quarterly reports from the operator of the Stabroek Block that contain updates on the reserves, however this information was not important.

The Opposition however believes that the hidden reserves could be equivalent to Trinidad and Tobago’s total oil production over its 100-year stint in the industry.

Low pointed out that data from T&T’s Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries indicate that the country’s oil production totals just over 3 billion barrels during its more than 100 years in the sector. The Economist in a subsequent interview with Kaieteur News said that by using a conservative estimate of 375M barrels of oil for each of the eight hidden discoveries, the country could easily be in the dark on the total oil produced by the twin island over its century long involvement in the industry.

The Opposition’s Oil and Gas spokesman pointed out that one of the Stabroek Block partners, CNOOC recently revealed that the one of the eight discoveries made since April 2022 is estimated to hold some 746M barrels of oil.

He argued, “We even saw one of the partners in the Stabroek Block say one of those finds was over 700 million barrels of oil. There are entire countries that don’t even have 700 million barrels of oil in its reserve and that’s one find.”

Low said that the Opposition will raise its concerns over the lack of transparency and accountability by the government with the international community and even multilateral organizations.

The Economist stressed, “The government right now could be hiding as much oil from the Guyanese people as Trinidad ever produced in their entire history. This is the scale of the mismanagement; this is the scale of the bad governance you are seeing in our country and it should disturb each and every Guyanese.”

VP Jagdeo two weeks ago revealed that the government has been updated on the Stabroek Block reserves, however this information is not important if ExxonMobil does not move to production. “We know about all the reserves we have now but the only way this country can make money (from) is if we actually convert the resources into reserves and then into production. Knowing reserves without converting it into production is nonsense because we already know we have 11 billion barrels of reserves and it will keep growing but what’s the point about knowing any, about reserves,” the VP said.

He continued, “and we do get every quarter, a report on reserves. Every quarter, we get a report so we got a quarterly report, the Ministry in the last quarter of 2023 on it, so the information has to come to us.”

Jagdeo pointed out that while the information is presented to government, its focus is not on pushing Exxon to do more appraisal activities to understand the resources discovered, but on moving to production, since “you only make money on production for the country, not knowing how much reserves you got.”

In the realm of oil and gas, companies undertake a process known to the industry as appraisal to help the developer determine whether or not a project is viable. This process helps to reduce the range of uncertainty in the volumes of hydrocarbons in place; define the size and configuration of the reservoir and collect data for the prediction of the performance of the reservoir during the forecasted production life.

Jagdeo was asked to provide an estimate of the country’s reserves but instead said he would check to see whether the report submitted by ExxonMobil contains proprietary information so they can be shared on the Ministry of Natural Resources’ website. “I have asked the Ministry on that to see if there is anything proprietary in the reports and to see if we can’t extract the basics, so if the report in its fullness has elements that are only the Ministry and the staff of the ministry then we can’t extract parts of the report and make it public on the Ministry’s website,” the Vice President explained.

---

• discoveries, low, Match, oil, reserves, Trinidad

---