Since 2022, ExxonMobil has invested 1.5 million hours of training to build the skills of Guyanese men and women working in the country’s oil and gas industry.
President of ExxonMobil Guyana, Alistair Routledge, on a recent episode of Starting Point – The Oil and Gas edition podcast, said developing local talent remains one of the company’s top priorities. “We want, at the end of the day, the natural resources of the country to benefit as many Guyanese as possible, not just through the revenues it generates, but also through the people that get employment and have business opportunities.”
Oil companies delivered 1,600+ training programs for Guyanese in 2024 | OilNOW
He noted that Guyanese now make up 70% of the nation’s oil and gas workforce, with about 1,800 citizens employed offshore. Due to the rotational work system, around 900 are on duty at any given time across drill ships, production facilities, and support vessels. “They play key roles across our operations,” Routledge said.
Training, he explained, spans every level of ExxonMobil’s operations. “We have, since 2022, invested around one and a half million hours of training, everything from safety and health in our operations to leadership training across our Guyanese workforce,” he said.
Routledge highlighted the Technical Training Center at Port Mourant as a symbol of ExxonMobil’s commitment to building local capacity. “To me, it is really an icon of what we’re doing in the country,” he said. “We don’t have the institutions today to meet the standards required for an oil and gas industry that operates to the highest international standards.”
He explained that the vision to develop the facility was shared with the government. “While we’ve been sending Guyanese overseas to train, we really want to have that here,” he said. “That was the vision that we developed with the government to build an institution in Port Mourant that is now taking on board the fifth cohort of Guyanese to be trained for the offshore facilities.”
The program trains highly technical professionals for positions such as production operators, electrical and instrumentation technicians, and process technicians. “They all have historically had to go to Canada for training,” Routledge said. “This month, they started the fifth cohort training in Guyana, the first time it will be able to train Guyanese [in country], and indeed, an institution that can take trainees from overseas.”
ExxonMobil is the operator of the massive Stabroek Block offshore Guyana, where 11 billion barrels of oil-equivalent have been discovered. A string of projects is in progress, with plans to increase installed oil production capacity from the current level of more than 900,000 barrels per day (b/d) to 1.7 million b/d.
