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Role of ExxonMobil’s Investments & Production in Guyana’s record growth

Mar 15, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

Your Kaieteur News editorial (March 9) highlighted ExxonMobil’s role in various oil production projects in Guyana waters. The projects should not be looked at only negatively even if one is not pleased with the percentage (royalty) return to Guyana of total revenues. A balanced perspective will do just the subject. One must also look at how investment in the varied projects and the royalties and profit sharing have contributed to growth and development of Guyana. The amount is substantial.

It can’t be disputed that without ExxonMobil investment and search and drilling for oil and its major finds and production, Guyana won’t be in the news and won’t be growing at the current record rate. No one would care about Guyana and won’t even bother where it is on the map.

Without ExxonMobil, revenues (from royalty and profit sharing) would not have been available for the huge infrastructure projects that propel development and enrich many.  The oil industry has provided jobs for thousands. Money from Exxon have bene used to finance the gas-to-shore project on the West Coast for the Wales power station. Revenues from Exxon have been used to fund the new Demerara bridge. Standard of living of most Guyanese has improved substantially from 2020 with investments and the available of the oil funds in the national coffers.

As the editorial noted, there are Liza 1, Liza 2, and Liza 3 (Payara) and three more projects for a total of six involving outlays of some thirty billion American dollars. The Whiptail project recently approved is set to cost US$12.7B.  Exxon had planned some US$50 in investment, and with additional oil finds, that amount will grow. Some $40B were already spent and the rest coming. That is a huge amount of money for a small economy. KN reported that some US$33.9B was already repaid to Exxon through its 75% recovery of expenses from oil produced between December 2018 and currently and sold on the international market; the sooner expenses are recovered, the higher would be the revenues for Guyana. The paper also notes that ExxonMobil is working on a seventh project at which billions would be outlay for this Hammerhead project.  And plans are afoot for an eighth investment project that would involve more than ten billion dollars. The more the projects, the greater would be the investments in Guyana and the amount in royalty and profit sharing.

As KN noted, the first three oil projects have been paid off and more will be paid off soon and more lined up for outlay investment. The sooner the cost recovery is completed, the larger would be the amount of money flowing into the coffers as profit sharing (50%).  One can’t disagree with the paper that more projects mean more barrels of daily production, with 1.4 million barrels per day planned by end of 2026 as an intermediate target, and two million barrels daily not long (a couple years) after that achievement.  One can’t disagree with the paper that “all of this has its positives no matter how narrow for Guyana the percentages in royalty”.  The country has been growing rapidly since 2019 and will continue to experience huge growth rates as long as oil is produced and the price for it remains relatively high.

Yours truly,

Vishnu Bisram

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