Last Updated on Tuesday, 14 February 2023, 20:43 by Denis Chabrol
ExxonMobil, the operator in the Stabroek Block, has increased production by 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) from Liza 1 and Liza 2 and is targeting 400,000 bpd in the coming months, ExxonMobil’s Vice President (Upstream) Liam Mallon said on Tuesday.
Giving a production update at the Guyana Energy Conference being held from February 14 to 17 at the Marriott Hotel, he said already production has increased from name-plate capacity from 360,000 bpd to 380,000 bpd from the Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessels (FPSOs), Unity and Destiny.
In an apparent assurance that producing above the name-plate capacity is not a breach of safety rules, Mr Mallon said the hike ab in daily output was being done “with exceptional safety and reliability.”
In the coming months, ExxonMobil plans to bring on stream several more FPSOs for field developments. The first would be Prosperity to produce 220,000 bpd, One Guyana for Yellowtail (250,000 bpd) by the end of 2025, Uaru (250,000 bpd) , Whiptail (220,000 to 275,000 bpd) by 2027 and Fangtooth.
The ExxonMobil Vice President also used the opportunity to announce a projected total production of 1.2 million bpd by the end of 2027.
Mallon said since the first discovery in 2015, the Stabroek Block has delivered more than 30 discoveries at a virtually unprecedented rate compared to other parts of the world, making Guyana “a major new energy player.” “Personally, I have been in this industry too long, almost 40 years, and I have never in my career- and I think I have worked almost all over the world and almost on all of the mega project; I have never in my career seen anything quite like this,” he said.
With proven reserves of about 11 billion barrels of oil equivalent, he said it is the largest in the industry in the past 10 years even as exploration of Guyana’s “vast potential” continues.
Mallon estimates that more than 4,400 Guyanese are employed as a result of the oil sector.