ExxonMobil Guyana Limited has announced a series of public meetings to discuss the Whiptail Development Project planned for the Stabroek block. The initiative aims to familiarise the public with the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), both of which have been forwarded to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for review.
To ensure that local communities are well-informed and have a platform to voice their concerns, eight meetings have been planned across various coastal locations in Guyana throughout September. From the Leonora Technical Institute in Region Three to the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) Center in Port Mourant, Region Six, ExxonMobil is casting a wide net to ensure maximum community engagement.
The meetings are being held during a period of consultation. The public has been encouraged to make comments and recommendations on the EIA, which Exxon has submitted to the EPA.
The Whiptail Development Project, with an estimated development budget nearing US$13 billion will be positioned approximately 195 kilometres northeast of Guyana’s capital, Georgetown. The development will exploit three vast fields: Whiptail, Pinktail, and Tilapia. With plans to drill up to 72 wells, the project’s scale is massive.
Central to the project is a state-of-the-art floating production, storage and offloading vessel with the capacity to store 2 million barrels of oil. This vessel will boast a production capacity of 250,000 barrels of oil per day and is projected to offload crude to tankers every three to six days during peak production periods. While the project will produce between 400 million and 640 million standard cubic feet of gas daily, most of it will be re-injected back into the wells, using only a fraction as fuel.
Scheduled to be fully operational by 2027, production activities are set to commence in late 2027 or 2028, lasting for a minimum of two years.
Exxon and its partners, Hess and CNOOC, are compiling a field development plan (FDP) which will be reviewed alongside the EIA. A decision is expected early 2024.
