ExxonMobil Guyana President Alistair Routledge said the Yellowtail offshore oil project is expected to start producing crude oil in August 2025. Routledge made the comments during a panel discussion at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, this week.
The Yellowtail project will use the ONE GUYANA floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, which arrived in Guyana in April. If production starts in August as expected, the four-month window between arrival and first oil would align with the timelines achieved for the company’s first two projects in the basin — Liza 1 and 2.
The Liza Destiny FPSO, which launched production in December 2019, and the Liza Unity, which started up in February 2022, each began producing oil four months after arrival. The Prosperity FPSO, used for the Payara development, took seven months, arriving in April 2023 and starting production in November. The Payara development had greater complexity, including a higher number of development wells.
While Prosperity took longer to initiate production, it demonstrated a significant improvement in post-startup performance. The vessel reached its design capacity of 220,000 barrels per day (b/d) in just two months, and was optimized to 250,000 b/d within six months. This is a marked acceleration compared to earlier projects.
The Liza Destiny FPSO, hampered by a flaring mishap in early operations, took five months to reach its design capacity of 120,000 b/d, and two years after that, to reach its optimized production target of 150,000 b/d. Meanwhile, the Liza Unity FPSO met its design capacity of 220,000 b/d five months after startup, and hit its optimized level of 250,000 b/d eight months after that.
Based on this trend, ExxonMobil could bring Yellowtail to its design capacity of 250,000 b/d swiftly after startup, with the rapid ramp-up seen with Prosperity serving as a model for Yellowtail’s performance.
Yellowtail is the fourth of eight developments ExxonMobil has planned in the Stabroek Block, where it is the operator with a 45% stake, alongside Hess Corp (30%) and China’s CNOOC (25%).
Beyond Yellowtail, Exxon and its partners have two additional oil projects, each with the same 250,000 b/d design capacity, slated for production between 2026 and 2028. Two more developments are currently in the application phase and are being targeted for startup between 2029 and 2030. These future projects are expected to include not only oil but also gas and condensate production, marking a diversification of the resource base as the consortium adds developments offshore Guyana.
The Exxon-led group sees potential for up to 10 simultaneous developments in the Stabroek Block.
