Guyana oil output may surpass T&T’s

(Trinidad Express) Guyana has come a long way from being a recipient of discounted oil under special terms from Venezuela via PetroCaribe, to where it is now: set with ExxonMobil to topple Trinidad and Tobago as the new largest oil producer in the Caribbean, and one of the largest in South America.

On a conference call with investors on Tuesday, ExxonMobil vice president of Investor Relations and Secretary Jeff Woodbury (because ExxonMobil chairman Rex Tillerson is US President Trump’s Secretary of State) said Guyana will initially produce about 100,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd).

To put in perspective, T&T has been struggling to produce 70,000 bopd on average in 2016, according to Energy Ministry data as at last November.

In a statement yesterday, State oil company Petrotrin said it was “open to the possibility of further developing business relations with fellow energy companies in neighbouring Guyana.”

Petrotrin also said its Pointe-a-Pierre refinery was 100 years old this year, and wanted — a year after its completion — to advise that thanks to its Gasoline Optimisation Programme at Pointe-a-Pierre, “the refinery has resumed high throughput operations consistent with its capacity of 168,000 bopd.”

The statement said: “While Petrotrin is confident that it can explore several avenues for improved relations with the Guyanese energy industry, our capacity to process the crude discovered in the Stabroek Block can only be determined after the quality of this crude has been ascertained. In this regard, Petrotrin will be further guided by the ongoing discussions with the Guyanese government.”