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‘Remarkable success of Guyana’s Stabroek Block no surprise to ExxonMobil’- Senior Vice President says
By Davina Bagot
Kaieteur News- While ExxonMobil often touts the risk it took in exploring Guyana’s Stabroek Block as an excuse to avoid renegotiating the lopsided terms of the 2016 oil deal, the company’s Senior Vice President for Deep Water, J. Hunter Farris recently let the proverbial ‘cat out of the bag’.
ExxonMobil Senior Vice President, Deep Water, J. Hunter Farris
The remarkable success of the block came as no surprise the company said, since it conducted its due diligence for an extended period. Farris in a recent interview with Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Energy Conference, Kiana Wilburg was asked to say whether the 46 discoveries made in the Stabroek Block superseded his expectations.
With decades of experience, he explained that while the discoveries made locally have been nothing short of “remarkable” they simply came as no surprise. “It’s been a journey and maybe to answer your question directly, did it exceed my expectation, no. Not at all. It didn’t because I knew that the company, my company, ExxonMobil, we’re gonna do what we say we’re gonna do, and we’re gonna bring our very best,” Farris boasted.
He continued, “So you just, you think about where we’ve come from, I mean Guyana always thought that there was oil and gas, we always knew we had some hypotheses at the area, we studied it for a long time and this is our shot to go make it happen.”
Farris noted that since his last visit to the Guyana Energy Conference in 2019, the company has managed to develop three world class projects, now producing over 650,000 barrels daily. It also has three in the development stages, already sanctioned by the government.
According to him, this is “completely unheard of in our industry and in the deep-water space so this whole expectation, I knew we would bring our best, I knew we do what we said we were gonna do and then I’ve been very pleased by the outcome and how quickly, responsibly, safely we’ve been able to not only find frontier resource but develop it at really industry leading pace that then brings significant value to the people of Guyana and that’s what our job is.”
He described Guyana as an “oil super power” given the more than 11 billion barrels of resources discovered by the consortium over the past 10 years. ExxonMobil first announced the discovery of oil in the Stabroek Block in May 2015. This later led to a string of other successful discoveries in the oil rich block. At the time the now heavily criticised 2016 Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) was signed, the company only marked three discoveries, amounting to about 1.1 billion barrels of resources.
Exxon previously claimed there was risk involved in exploring the location since the country had no proven reserves at the time. The company therefore justified the terms of the contract for incentivising its investments. Even with the significant increase in the resources discovered to date, now pegged at 11.6B barrels, government has refused to utilise the mechanism outlined in the contract, to seek a renegotiation of the lopsided terms.
Experts previously argued that the substantial changes in the Stabroek Block justify Guyana’s calls for a renegotiation. It was reported that former Head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Dr. Vincent Adams said, “I have spent 30 years at the highest level of the US government and I negotiated (and) I evaluated contracts. That was part of my life and as a matter of fact, that was a main part of my life, and I’m talking about the Exxons of the world. I have seen many contracts you can think about and changes are expected and the one thing that you always have a justification for changing a contract is when there is a major change.”
He went on to point out, “As a matter of fact, in every government contract we had, we had what was called a change control board. Every change that comes in, it goes to the board and then we figure out what to do with it in terms of the contract so all this stuff about sanctity is…all nonsense.”
(‘Remarkable success of Guyana’s Stabroek Block no surprise to ExxonMobil’- Senior Vice President says)
(Remarkable success)
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