Edison Chouest Offshore, a transportation solutions provider based in Louisiana, is looking to expand its operations in the new oil producing country of Guyana. The company’s local affiliate, G-Boats, is currently operating an oil and gas offshore support terminal with its joint venture partner, Guyanese owned John Fernandes Limited.
Guyana’s Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar, visited the facility on Friday.
“What I’m happy about is 99.9% of people on this base is Guyanese and that is something we welcome as a government,” Indar said. “I’m happy that this kind of facility is in-country. If we didn’t have something like this in Guyana, most of this service, the work, and all of the feed-in service would be coming out of Trinidad. So, I’m happy the facility is established and operable at this point in time.”
Edison Chouest’s Business Development Officer, Daniel Lafont, said the terminal supports the operations of ExxonMobil and CGX Energy.
“We need some extension of our wharf, and we asked the minister to come look at the neighbouring properties and let off on what we think we need so that we can put two berths for the vessels and potentially a third berth. Because as things keep increasing, the need is there,” Lafont said.
Discussing the need for the terminal, Lafont said, “As you see the vessels behind us, if it wasn’t for these plants, they would be in Trinidad today trying to get mud, cement, the product that they’re here to pick up. So, this is another way of keeping work in Guyana.”
Indar said he understands the joint venture wants to expand while adding that the government will wait for the partners to detail what their specific needs are so as to facilitate that expansion.
Chief Executive Officer of John Fernandes Limited, Phillip Fernandes, who is a director in the venture, said the two companies share the same values when it comes to local content. The result of this is that most of the staffers on site are Guyanese.
“So far we’ve been very pleased. We find both companies; ourselves and our foreign partner, share the same motivation and the same values and intentions of developing local content, developing a Guyanese workforce that can benefit mostly from this operation,” said Philip Fernandes, CEO of John Fernandes Ltd. and Director of GPort.
