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Exxon may not be telling the truth about Guyana’s oil reserves – VP Jagdeo
‘Exxon may not be telling the truth about Guyana’s oil reserves – VP Jagdeo said on Thursday during a media conference”.
By: Davina Bagot
Kaieteur News – ExxonMobil Guyana may not be telling the truth about Guyana’s oil reserves. This conclusion was made by Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday during a media conference.
Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo
The Vice President in an invited comment to Kaieteur News explained that government used the quarterly reports submitted by the operator of the Stabroek Block to arrive at the recently announced update to the reserves. In August this year, Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat revealed that the reserves grew from 11 billion barrels to 11.6 billion barrels. The announcement came some two years and four months after the last update (in April 2022), following eight additional discoveries.
On Wednesday however, President of ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL), Alistair Routledge told reporters that the Stabroek Block reserves are currently less than 11B barrels. In addressing the issue, the Vice President made it clear that government’s figure should not vary from Exxon’s. Although Exxon told reporters that government conducted its own analysis to arrive at the figure, Jagdeo made it clear that the State has no such ongoing arrangement.
To this end, he said. “So it’s either one of two things, it’s either Exxon is not being truthful or the Ministry gave me the wrong figure but that is where the figure is sourced from – the submission by Exxon and so there shouldn’t be a difference.” Jagdeo said it was “totally false” that government was conducting its own assessments.
The VP explained, “I asked the technical staff where the reserves number is coming from and they told me we are getting the reserve numbers from this quarterly report. I don’t know of anybody that we have hired to check reserves so it can’t be that we are doing our own assessment of reserves. Right now, the reserve figures come from Exxon.”
He was keen to note that the Ministry is now in the process of recruiting consultants to conduct an analysis of the country’s reserves. To this end, Jagdeo noted that when this process commences, it is likely to produce figures varying those presented by Exxon. “If we hire a consultant and they would say oh this rock formation here, we believe it has a barrel of oil…and they (Exxon) say no, I believe it’s half a barrel per every square foot then you can have varying things there but right now, we shouldn’t have any variance…because the ministry’s numbers are derived from the reports,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, Minister Bharrat at the sidelines of Thursday’s Sitting of the National Assembly also addressed the issue in an exclusive interview with this publication. He told Kaieteur News that there is a general misconception that every oil discovery should be added to the reserve. He however noted that when a discovery is made, an estimate of the resources may be given; however, further appraisal activities will be required to confirm the reserves.
To this end, Bharrat said, “When the appraisal work is done, sometimes that number decreases and, in some cases, it increases so that is why you would find that it fluctuate a little.” Bharrat made it clear that the government announced the update to the reserve after analysing the data presented by Exxon. When asked what reserve figure the Guyanese population should accept, the Minister said the Ministry will have to reassess the numbers.
In a statement last evening, the Ministry explained that Exxon in its third quarter submission to the government presented a new reserve figure amounting to less than 11B barrels. To this end, the Ministry noted that it is currently reviewing the data and will release an updated assessment of the reservoir volumes following completion of the verification process.
(Exxon may not be telling the truth about Guyana’s oil reserves – VP Jagdeo)
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