Authorities in Africa, India, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are stepping up to help Guyana strengthen its oil sector capabilities, said Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo during a press engagement on Thursday in Georgetown.
The chief policymaker for the oil and gas sector acknowledged that accelerated capacity building is a priority for the government especially since the country is gearing up for the award of contracts from its first bid round. If the administration is successful in awarding all 14 blocks, it will add to the six active offshore concessions being managed by the Ministry of Natural Resources with help from sister agencies. These include Stabroek, Kaieteur, Canje, Orinduik, Kanuku and Corentyne blocks.
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“We’re starting to recruit people to send abroad to look at marketing of our oil. We have ADNOC in UAE for this,” Jagdeo said. “India has made some offers and they may even deploy people to assist us for a short period. We’ve also been speaking with Ghana and other places to have some of their people deployed to our agency to work with us over time. So, a lot of this (help) is coming from the developing world.”
As efforts progress on the modalities for those bilateral arrangements, Dr. Jagdeo said work is continuing on building the country’s technological capabilities to verify oil production matters pertaining to the Stabroek Block where 11 billion barrels of oil-equivalent have been unlocked.
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While the country is grateful for external support, he said such a state of affairs cannot be in perpetuity. The goal is to have Guyanese in the driver’s seat of monitoring from the technical and technological standpoints, he said.
