At the close of the third quarter of 2019, more than 1,700 of the workers supporting project development activities at the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana are Guyanese, 300 of which are women in both the professional and technical fields.
ExxonMobil said in a promotional video published on Sunday via its local Facebook page that training is an ongoing process with more than 200,000 hours provided to the project’s Guyanese workforce in 2019.
This is in keeping with what the company has said is its aim to develop a globally competitive local workforce and supply chain.
“Approximately 80 percent of the training hours were in the areas of professional or technical craft or trade training. More than 40 Guyanese are receiving firsthand training experience in places such as Brazil, Canada, France, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and the United States,” the video said.
It said that ExxonMobil has also increased the amount of money it spends on Guyanese suppliers and stated that in the first three quarters of 2019 more than $16 billion Guyana dollars was spent directly with more than 600 Guyanese vendors on services ranging from food to engineering. This amounts to a more than 65 percent increase from the corresponding period in 2018.
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“Our vision is that Guyanese participation in the oil and gas sector here will continue to grow and the young men and women we hire today will be the experts tomorrow. They’ll take the reins of this industry and develop skills that are globally competitive. So, they’ll be leading this industry and other industries both here and elsewhere in the future,” Rod Henson, ExxonMobil Guyana Country Manager, told delegates at the recently held Guyana International Petroleum Exhibition and Summit (GIPEX 2019).
Already, 600 local companies are servicing the oil and gas sector in the South American country where oil was only discovered close to four years ago and production is just now about to begin.
