The first phase of a world-class offshore support and fabrication facility called the Port of Vreed-en-Hoop was launched Saturday at Plantation Best, West Bank Demerara.
A ceremony attended by over 300 people took place at the facility, situated on 400 hectares of reclaimed land in the Demerara River. Two businessmen, Nicholas Deygoo-Boyer and Andron Alphonso, lead Vreed-en-Hoop Shore Base Inc. (VEHSI), an enterprise that extracted soil from the seafloor and transformed a mudflat into a thriving operation to serve Guyana’s expanding oil and gas sector.
President Irfaan Ali praised the launch as part of Guyana’s wider optimistic development story. “We must understand the moment in history that we are in,” Ali told the gathering.
VEHSI won a contract in 2022 from ExxonMobil, as the U.S. major sought mechanisms to build offshore support capacity in-country. VEHSI includes NRG Holdings, a joint venture between National Hardware Guyana Limited and ZRN Investment Inc.—companies owned by Boyer and Alphonso. NRG partnered with Jan De Nul, a Belgian engineering and construction firm to form VEHSI.
Patrick Lowie, a VEHSI Area Manager from Jan De Nul said, “We are proud of the result, proud of Jan De Nul’s US$100 million plus out-of-pocket investment.”
Altogether, the group spent more than US$260 million on the first phase of the Port, which they completed in December 2024, Alphonso told the ceremony. He said US$60 million was also spent to deepen and widen the Demerara Channel, pursuant to plans by VEHSI to lower shipping costs.
“World class infrastructure is a catalyst for growth,” Alphonso said about the Port.
Guyana’s Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, stressed that governments have a role to play in ensuring the stability of investments like VEHSI’s. “Your investment must be secure, but the only way it can be secure is if there is stability… and if there is a supportive government in place,” Bharrat stated.
ExxonMobil Guyana President, Alistair Routledge said the selection of VEHSI in 2022 predicated a highly competitive exercise that compared 20 different proposals. “This is a foundation and it’s the beginning of ExxonMobil’s partnership with VEHSI, a 20-year contract of operation,” he said.
Routledge reminded that the Yellowtail project, which will start crude production this year, underpinned the establishment of the shorebase, “The Yellowtail project is the fourth development, and since then, we have gone on to seek approval for, and received approval and made final investment decisions (FID) in the Uaru and Whiptail projects.”
Like Yellowtail, Uaru and Whiptail are designed to produce 250,000 b/d. They will join the currently producing Liza 1, Liza 2 and Payara projects. By the time all are simultaneously on stream in 2027-2028, production capacity offshore Guyana will exceed 1.3 million b/d. All offshore developments are situated in the Stabroek Block, operated by ExxonMobil, in partnership with Hess and CNOOC.
