Exxon says operations bringing “tremendous benefits” to Guyanese

Feb 03, 2025 News

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…claims living standards on the rise 

Kaieteur News-Chief Executive Officer ExxonMobil Corporation, Darren Woods recently claimed that the company’s operations in Guyana have helped lifted the standard of living for citizens.

Speaking during Exxon’s fourth-quarter earnings call last Friday, Woods highlighted the rapid growth of the nation’s economy since oil production began. He said, “the benefits are tremendous, not just profitable growth for ExxonMobil, but rapidly rising living standards for the Guyanese people, the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] per capita more than tripling since we started production in 2020.”

Indeed, Guyana’s economy has experienced significant growth in recent years, primarily due to the expansion of its oil industry. Last year, the country’s GDP grew by 43.6%. GDP is the total monetary value of all goods and services produced within a country. EMGL commenced oil production offshore Guyana in December 2019. The previous APNU+ AFC government signed the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement for the oil block and that deal waives all taxes from EMGL and its partners Hess and CNOOC and caters for taxes to be paid by Guyana and agrees to the oil companies recovering 75% of investments before the remaining 25% is shared as profit.

The Stabroek Block in 2024 generated a whopping US$18B in revenue, a 55.4% increase compared with the total export earnings of the sector in 2023, some US$11.6B. As a result of that the PSA, EMGL grabbed US$15.4B of the 2024 revenue from oil, while Guyana’s Natural Resource Fund (NRF) received US$2.6B during the period. It should be noted that of the US$15.4B, some US$13.2B was recovered as cost while the rest counts as profit. Moreover, Woods also noted the remarkable progress of Exxon’s deep-water projects in the country, calling them among the fastest-paced developments in the industry. “In Guyana, we deliver record production from the world’s premier deep-water development, we’ve gone from discovery to 650,000 barrels per day in just 10 years. The pace for deep-water projects the world has rarely seen,” Woods said.

Despite Woods’ boast, in a November 2020 paper by the World Bank titled: A pivotal moment for Guyana: revitalizing the opportunities’, the Bank observed that Guyana was already a resource-rich country prior to the discovery of oil, but it had long struggled to transform its resource wealth into inclusive growth. The bank noted then that the country’s poverty rate has declined since 1991, but it remains among the highest in the LAC region at 43.4 percent, as decades of relatively jobless growth failed to yield significant poverty reduction. The advent of oil revenues could break this cycle, accelerating Guyana’s development and permanently reducing monetary and nonmonetary poverty, the bank said but also warned that oil revenues could also exacerbate Guyana’s existing challenges and cause the country’s development pattern to deteriorate further.

In its fact sheet on Guyana, the World Bank said that notwithstanding gains, poverty and social exclusion–including limited access to basic services–remain in Guyana’s hinterland. It pointed out that the education sector in Guyana has made remarkable progress in the last 15 years in terms of access; as of 2022, Guyana achieved 91 percent and 103 percent enrollment at the Nursery and Primary levels, respectively. However, learning outcomes still need to be improved across all levels. According to the 2022 Human Capital Index, a child born in Guyana just before the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will only be 50 percent as productive when she grows up as she could be if she enjoyed complete education and full health, which remains lower than the average for the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region. Although the average Guyanese student is expected to complete 12.2 years of schooling, this is equivalent to only 6.8 years of learning when expressed in Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS).  The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have compounded this.

In terms of health, the World Bank said health outcomes in Guyana remain below the average for LAC and comparator countries.  In 2021, the infant mortality rate was 23.2 per 1,000 live births (compared to a LAC average of 14 per 1,000 live births), and the under-5 mortality rate was 28 per 1,000 live births (compared to a LAC average of 16). Based on the recent Global Monitoring Report 2023, which reports on countries’ progress towards achieving universal health coverage as part of the monitoring for the SDGs, Guyana’s service coverage index stood at 76% in 2021. This means that about 76% of the population in Guyana can effectively access essential services. While this is an important improvement from the 65% it registered a decade ago, due, among other things, to advances in antenatal care and immunization coverage, the levels of service coverage have not advanced in recent years, the bank said.

Like what we seeing

Meanwhile, touching on the Yellowtail development, Exxon’s fourth project offshore Guyana which is slated to start production later this year, Woods expressed confidence in its execution.  “With respect to Yellowtail we really like what we are seeing there, with respect to Yellowtail specifically, we really like what we are seeing there. You know that the team who is managing the Guyana developments continues to demonstrate project after project; they just find new ways to innovate and overcome the challenge to deliver these things below budget, oftentimes and certainly ahead of schedule,” he said.  He continued, “My guess with Yellowtail is that it will come in better than what we have talked about…”

EMGL is the operator of the Stabroek Block, which covers an area of 6.6 million acres and is estimated to hold 11.6 billion barrels of oil. To date, Exxon has obtained approval from the Government of Guyana for six development projects in the Stabroek Block – Liza Phase One, Liza Phase Two, Payara, Yellowtail, Uaru and Whiptail. The first three projects are already producing oil at a daily estimated rate of 660,000 barrels per day (bpd). Notably, Exxon’s fourth-quarter adjusted upstream earnings were US$6.28 billion, an increase from the third-quarter driven by record production in Guyana and Permian, stronger natural gas prices, and favourable tax impacts, partly offset by lower crude realizations.  Exxon’s net production in the fourth quarter was 4.6 million oil-equivalent barrels per day, an increase of 20,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day versus the prior quarter.

(Exxon says operations bringing “tremendous benefits” to Guyanese)

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• Exxon, GDP, oil production, Stabroek Block

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