President of the Guyana Oil and Gas Energy Chamber (GOGEC), Manniram Prashad, said on Monday the organisation welcomes the comments made by President of ExxonMobil Guyana, Alistair Routledge, that by next year the company is moving almost all its supply work from T&T to Guyana, for its operations offshore the South American country.
Prashad said this reinforces the continuous representations by GOGEC for Guyanese to be employed and be engaged at all levels in the oil and gas industry.
“We are happy that the government is listening and supporting our calls for local content as we anxiously await the final draft of the bill,” he said, referring to a draft local content framework that is currently being finalized for implementation.
“The bill must also take into account our capabilities to deliver and what effect it would have on other industries who would have trained staff at considerable expense only to lose them to operators who can pay more and also if they are compelled by legislation,” Prashad said.
He pointed out that GOGEC is happy with its relationship with the government and the encouragement given when it launched its training centre recently with Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat and Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar, as they reiterated the importance of training Guyanese to support the country’s local content drive.
“We are also happy that ExxonMobil’s previous comments indicating their commitment to local content, is being realized,” Prashad said.
In a recent exclusive interview with OilNOW, Routledge said much has changed in Guyana from the early days when the company started exploration activities and made the world-class Liza discovery.
“In the early days, when we started exploration, there was no infrastructure, no expertise, no history to leverage so we had to utilize the existing capability, the existing facilities in Trinidad,” Routledge said. “Over time, now that we have that line of sight to more development, we can continue this investment journey and move more of that work, the facilities, the capability to Guyana.”
ExxonMobil was one of the first companies to throw its full support behind the locally organised Guyana Energy Conference and Exhibition (GEC-X) when the event was launched in February. GEC-X is slated to held on February 14-15, 2022.
