Since 2015, ExxonMobil Guyana and its major contractors have expended more than $29 billion Guyana dollars on the procurement of goods and services ranging from foodstuff to engineering. This has led to the evolution of new services, which include, for the first time in its history, Guyanese fabricating oil and gas equipment in-country.
The company recently divulged on its Access ExxonMobil Guyana programme that its expenditure on local content in Guyana has been doubling over the years, with more than $10 billion Guyana dollars already spent for the first half of 2019.
As of June 30, 2019, almost half of the company’s total workforce in-country comprise Guyanese, increasing to over 1350 persons, with 250 of these being women.
It was also disclosed that for 2019 alone Guyanese have been exposed to more than 121,000 hours of training, including in the United States, Singapore, Canada and Brazil.
With more than 1,700 local companies registered with its Centre for Local Business Development (CLBD), ExxonMobil Guyana has since made known that services have been procured—ranging from foodstuff to engineering—from 478 local vendors/companies.
Economic Advancement
Speaking on its Local Content initiatives, Devon Seeram, a Local Content Analyst with ExxonMobil Guyana, related that the company has “a multi-tiered approach which focuses on workforce development, which includes recruitment and training, supply and development.”
He said, “it is important that we build the local capacity here for the long term; we want to build a good relationship in-country to contribute to the economic advancement of Guyana.”
The analyst pointed out too that the development of Guyana’s local content is in the interest of ExxonMobil Guyana since, “it is cost effective to the company to utilize what we have in-country…if we utilize our local business here and they can supply materials, it saves ExxonMobil a lot of time and a lot of money.”
Reminding that, ExxonMobil will be in Guyana for decades, the analyst emphasized it is very important to the company for it to develop a good relationship with Guyanese and contribute to Guyana’s development, and more importantly, “we have to develop the capability of Guyanese for the long term.”
Liza Destiny
Senior Director of Public and Government Affairs, Deedra Moe, pointing to the fruits borne out of the commitment and investments in local content development by ExxonMobil Guyana, revealed that the arrival of the Floating Production Storage & Offloading (FPSO) Vessel—the Liza Destiny—would not be possible, “without the contributions made by hundreds of Guyanese men and women working safely on our activities every day.”
According to Moe, “in just a few short years we have made tremendous strides on local content” and reiterated, “it’s an essential component of Guyana becoming an oil producing nation in early 2020.”
