Guyana’s Vice President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, says government will be looking to establish an independent mechanism for monitoring ExxonMobil’s oil production. During a September 21 press conference, Dr. Jagdeo stated, “The next steps are to go to tender, a request for proposal for a company to track production on a daily basis.”
As of now, Guyana relies on oil production reports delivered by ExxonMobil, which details daily output from its Stabroek Block projects. Looking ahead, Exxon plans to augment its offshore operations monitoring capabilities through the installation of a fibre optic cable. This will be supplemented with an operations command centre, currently in development at Ogle, East Coast Demerara.Â
The Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) also monitor measurements on the floating production storage and offloading units producing the oil offshore. This relates to the accuracy of flow meters, tank gauging, sampling and testing of crude.
Guyana lab now equipped to run multiple tests on crude being produced offshore
Last year, Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, told Parliamentarians that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also strengthened its monitoring capacity. He said at the time the programme at the EPA grew from three members of staff to 13 for those dedicated full time towards monitoring oil and gas activities.