225 oil lifts recorded from Stabroek block in 2024 – Bharrat

A total of 225 oil lifts were recorded from the Stabroek Block last year, the Ministry of Natural Resources disclosed during a press conference on Tuesday.

While the revenue generated from the lifts is yet to be fully determined, Natural Resources Minister, Vickram Bharrat confirmed that the Government of Guyana received payments for 28 of the total lifts.

The announcement underscores the continued extraction activities in the Stabroek Block, which has been a key contributor to Guyana’s burgeoning oil and gas sector. Further details on the financial returns from the lifts are expected as the government finalizes its earnings reports.

“The production for 2024, I was advised that we had 225 lifts in 2024, which again, as I started out with my opening remarks that it was a good year for the natural resources sector, we have seen increases in almost every commodity across all the sectors.”

“And that is a significant increase from 2023, mainly from the third project coming into production and the full optimization of FPSO in 2024, compared to when it started out in 2023,” Minister Bharrat also explained.

According to the Minister, the government is currently working with a consultant on the further optimization of Exxon’s Prosperity Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels, to increase its production capacity.

“On the Prosperity optimization, the minimum capacity of that vessel is 220,000-230,000. So, the application is to ramp up to 250,000. That is the application they made for Prosperity. No decision on that as yet.”

“We are awaiting the report from the consultant we have and then we’ll have to do it in consultation with EPA as well. We have nothing against it in this case, it’s just safety concerns… our equipment as well as environment.”

Then there is the ONE GUYANA FPSO, which is expected to start up this year. According to Bharrat, this FPSO will service the fourth development of Yellowtail and will go a far way towards further boosting Guyana’s oil production.

“Again, we will see an increase in 2025 because we have the ONE GUYANA FPSO which should be commissioned and started up later in the year. So, we should have some amount of production from the ONE GUYANA FPSO in 2025,” the Minister said.

“As to how much or how early, at this point in time we won’t be able to give you that because it still depends on how fast it can get here and how fast EXXON can actually set up that FPSO. And their timeframe too depends on weather conditions, the seas and a number of other conditions they have to deal with offshore to set up everything and move to production.”

The Stabroek Block is 6.6 million acres (26,800 square kilometres). Exxon, through its local subsidiary Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL), holds 45 per cent interest therein. Hess Guyana Exploration Ltd holds 30 per cent interest, and CNOOC Petroleum Guyana Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNOOC Limited, holds the remaining 25 per cent interest.

Six FPSOs are expected to be operating offshore Guyana by 2027. The fourth FPSO, dubbed the ‘One Guyana’ FPSO, is expected to begin producing oil in the second half of this year, when production is expected to reach 250,000 barrels of oil per day.

The fifth FPSO, which would be named ‘Errea Wittu’, meaning “abundance” in the Warrau Indigenous language, would meanwhile operate in the Urau project. It would have an oil storage capacity of two million barrels, an oil production design rate of 250,000 barrels per day, and be able to offload approximately one million barrels onto a tanker in approximately 24 hours.

This vessel would be delivered by MODEC, a Japanese company that has confirmed construction of this FPSO. Start-up of the US$12.7 billion Urau development is targeted for 2026.

‘Jaguar’, the sixth FPSO, is earmarked for Exxon’s Whiptail project. Government has said that by the time this FPSO comes online in 2027, Guyana is expected to be producing as much as 1.2 million barrels of oil per day. This FPSO is currently in the final stages of construction.