GEORGETOWN: As tensions escalate between Guyana and Venezuela over oil exploration in a disputed offhsore territory, neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago is hoping the dispute can be resolved because of the opportunities the crude discovery presents.
The Exxon Guyana oil find announced in May, is estimated to be at least 700 million barrels of crude oil.
It is is “extremely significant and presents a huge opportunity for this country’s locally owned energy services sector”, Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine said in an e-mail reply to a Business Express query on July 24.
Around the year 2000 the United States Geological Survey (USGS) had stated that the Guyana-Suriname basin was highly prospective of hydrocarbons.
“There were past attempts to find oil and gas in Guyana that ended in frustration but now Exxon has had a major success,” Ramnarine said.
Suriname already produces oil and has a small refinery but Suriname is expanding and will be drilling not far from the Exxon Guyana Liza discovery soon, he said.
Citing a Bloomberg report earlier this month he said the size of the find could be worth 12 times Guyana’s current gross domestic product (GDP).
“Our country has many locally owned and established energy service companies like Tucker Energy Services and Well Services Petroleum Ltd that could supply services to the developing oil and gas industry in Guyana. There may also be opportunities for the independent exploration and production (E&P) companies here in T&T like Trinity.”
Ramnarine said in the 1960s oil was discovered in the North Sea and the net result of that has not only been oil production for Great Britain but the development of an energy services sector in the UK that has become globally competitive.”
From an export destination perspective, Guyana’s top five trading partners are the United States (31 per cent), Canada (26 per cent), Venezuela (8.6 per cent), the United Kingdom (6.5 per cent), and Trinidad and Tobago (3.3 per cent).
On July 6, though, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro said he was calling in the country’s ambassador in neighbouring Guyana for consultations amid the escalating row over oil.
The OPEC nation in June demanded that Guyana halt exploration being carried out by Exxon off the coast of the region known as the Essequibo, weeks after Exxon said it had found oil.
He ruled out the possibility of armed conflict, but described recently elected Guyanese President David Granger as a “hostage of Exxon Mobil”.
Granger said last week at a meeting in Washington, DC, that the dispute posed a threat to Guyana’s very survival.
