US energy major, ExxonMobil plans to boost natural gas output and supply in Guyana through a large-scale project announced this week.
The ‘Wales Gas Vision’, outlined by Exxon’s Guyana head, Alistair Routledge, at an energy conference in Georgetown, is set to provide gas for several petrochemical and power projects through a $1 bill pipeline completed last year.
The Guyanean Government will take some of the gas, produced by Exxon at its large Stabroek Block and ship it through the pipeline for power generation and natural gas liquids production.
Also planned is a gas processing and LNG offshore facility to be built by US company Fulcrum LNG.
ExxonMobil could be in charge of building a separate set of pipelines to transport the gas that the government is entitled to as profit gas to Fulcrum LNG’s facility, Guyana’s Energy Minister Vickram Bharrat told Reuters at the conference.
The plant will allow LNG exports and gas supply to Guyana’s Berbice area for producing fertilisers and alumina.
Neither the energy giant nor the government have disclosed the project’s total investment figures. A complete assessment of gas resources at Exxon’s block is needed for that, and it must decide how it will use its part of the gas to be produced, Bharrat added.
But the government believed that there is enough gas for commercial projects, the Minister said.
Guyana is aiming to add natural gas to an energy mix dominated by oil output, helping to open new sources of revenue, he said.
“There will be a shift towards gas utilisation and monetisation,” the Minister said at the conference.
The government is expected to launch its gas strategy this year.
An ExxonMobil-led consortium in Guyana, involving US oil company, Hess and China’s CNOOC, plans to ramp up gas output in the coming years, especially through projects involving gas not associated with oil, such as Longtail.
A final investment decision (FID) for Longtail, which would be the group’s eighth project in the South American country and which could deliver up to 1.2 bill cu ft per day of gas, is expected next year.
ExxonMobil’s fourth floating oil production facility, built by SBM Offshore, which left Singapore this week, will start operations in the third quarter.
