PPP-Govt. aiming for second oil block auction next year

PPP-Govt. aiming for second oil block auction next year – Jagdeo

Jul 18, 2025 News

Vice President and General Secretary of PPP/C Bharrat Jagdeo

Kaieteur News – If the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) is successful at the upcoming General and Regional Elections, the party will launch a second oil block auction in 2026. This is according to the party’s General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo.

Recently, Vice President Jagdeo announced that the PPP government will finalise no new oil deals from the inaugural oil block auction launched in 2023 until after the elections slated for September 1.

At his Thursday press conference, Jagdeo said, “We are aiming for an auction next year but it depends on the completion of the seismic.” Following the first auction, the government issued a tender for a firm to conduct 3D multi-client seismic survey offshore Guyana. The aim is to acquire, process, and interpret high-quality seismic data to facilitate exploration and the potential development of hydrocarbon resources. This effort also seeks to ensure that better data is available for evaluation during future bidding and licensing rounds.

Jagdeo explained, “So if we can complete the seismic, because we don’t want to go back to an auction without good data now.”

He disclosed that several companies were assigned to carry out the survey. “Because it’s a large volume of work we wanted and we wanted to move swiftly to complete the seismic before we go to the next auction,” he noted. Jagdeo said he is not aware of the current progress, noting that he is fully focused on the PPP’s elections campaign. However, he believes that with the data from the seismic survey, the new Production Sharing Agreement (PSA), and an updated petroleum law, the second auction will generate stronger interest.

He added, “In the past we went to the first auction but as I explained, there were several things not settled at that time, we hadn’t settled a new PSA, we had not settled a new law, so the people bidding did not know what sort of environment they were bidding into and then they had to use the old data that was there, and some of it was 2D data and it was spotty not for all of the blocks. And now if we can remedy that, we expect that you have some really serious bids for the new blocks.”

Guyana’s inaugural licensing round

Back in June Jagdeo said no prospecting licences will be signed for the oil blocks awarded in Guyana’s inaugural competitive licensing round at least for the remainder of this government’s term.

In 2023, six companies were awarded offshore oil blocks and four companies had accepted the terms of the new PSA.

The government had awarded eight oil blocks: Sispro Inc, Total Energies Consortium with Qatar Energy and Petronas, Liberty Petroleum Corporation, Cybele Energy Limited, International Group Investment Inc., ExxonMobil Guyana Limited, Hess and CNOOC and Delcorp Inc, which comprises Watad Energy and Communications Limited and Arabian Drilling Company.

The four companies that accepted the new PSA are Cybele Energy Limited, Delcorp Inc., TotalEnergies Consortium, and International Group Investment Inc. The oil companies will be expected to pay a 10 per cent royalty and a 10 per cent corporate tax to the government. In the meantime, the cost recovery will be capped at 65 per cent in a given year, while profits will be shared 50/50 between the parties.

The government has since passed the Petroleum Activities Law and has finalised the new model PSA that will govern future awards of deep water and shallow water concessions.

Notably, eleven of the oil blocks on auction are located in the shallow area and three are in the deepwater zone. Importantly, each area is governed by separate PSAs. They range between 1000 square kilometres to 3000 square kilometres with the majority of them being close to 2000 square kilometres.

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Auction, Bharrat Jagdeo, oil, oil block, PPP, seismic

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