The Guyana government has moved forward with reopening the tender for marketing the country’s share of the Liza Crude being produced 120 miles offshore at the ExxonMobil Liza Phase 1 Development.
In a notice published in the local press, the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) said the deadline for submission of Request for Proposals is Tuesday, September 22, 2020.
The notice indicated that there will be a minimum of five lifts per annum, each consisting of one million barrels of Liza Crude.
The contractor will also be expected to provide support to MNR – Department of Energy (DE), in all operating and back office responsibilities of managing the crude sales for each lift. Responsibilities will also include helping the local agencies understand the behaviors and yields of the Liza Blend and how this affect pricing differentials and advocating for any operational considerations that may affect the pricing of the crude.
Training sessions will also have to be conducted for MNR/DE personnel in matters relating to crude oil supply and trading fundamentals, and more specifically, those relevant to the Liza grade pricing.
The tender for crude marketing services was opened prior to the March 2, 2020 elections in Guyana and 19 companies were later shortlisted.
Speaking at a recent press conference in Georgetown, Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, said the newly installed government had put the evaluation process for the companies that were shortlisted, on hold.
Several traders and firms, including oil majors, were among the companies shortlisted by a five-member Evaluation Committee formed by DE.
“We made it plain in the [elections] campaign that people should not be submitting bids to an illegal government that was there at that time,” Mr Jagdeo said, referring to the APNU+AFC coalition that was in office a year after a no-confidence vote was moved against the government and five months after the coalition lost the March elections.
He said to evaluate the bids sent in at a time when the government’s legal status was in question “would be unfair to people who acted decently, the companies who acted decently and did not put in a bid because they recognise the threat to democracy and you had an illegal government, that they now be excluded from the process; because they are moving ahead to evaluate the bids that were received in the period when the government was illegal.”
Expanding on this, Mr. Jagdeo said, “So, we have made it clear that we have reopened the tender for that contract so people, all those who did not get a chance to bid, they can now submit their bids.”
Shell Western Supply and Trading Limited was initially hired to lift the country’s first three million-barrel oil cargoes, all of which have already been sold with a total of approximately 2 more lifts remaining for 2020.
