Initially the US had ruled out building an oil refinery in Guyana, but the government is keeping its horizons still open as it believe that this may still be an excellent idea.
As such, it has sought the opinions of a top oil and gas consultant to provide a high-level feasibility assessment as to whether investing in an oil refinery is a viable economic option for the country.
This approval was granted Tuesday by the Cabinet, as was disclosed by the Minister of Natural Resources. The consultant is Pedro Haas, Director of Advisory Services, Hartree Partners LP, a US company that provides energy-related advisory services for the oil industry (upstream and downstream) to the chemical, gas and power industries. The services of Haas were secured through the New Petroleum Production Discussion Group established by Chatham House. Haas is expected to provide an assessment report in four weeks. And among other things, he will be examining demand, the economics, prices, availability and forecasts. Once the report is in, some decisions will have to be made, the minister said.
There is high interest in the oil discoveries offshore Guyana within the last two years.
Confirmed is between 800,000 to 1.4B barrels of oil in the basin located more than 100 miles from Georgetown. Some estimates, at today’s prices, put the value of the oil between US$70B-US$200B. ExxonMobil, the US exploration company is drilling more wells to determine exactly how big of a find it is. From the perspective of Guyana, it is one of the major developments in the history of the country, with moves to tweak legislation and prepare the technical personnel for production which could start by 2020.
