An article published in Tuesday’s issue of the Trinidad Guardian has described the recent discovery of oil and gas offshore Guyana as “one of the most significant events in the history of Guyana and in the history of Caricom” that will change the trajectory of the Guyanese economy from 2020 and onwards. I’m not sure that Caricom knows what to make of all this. Caricom’s energy focus has, after all, been renewable energy.”
The article, written by Trinidad and Tobago Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine stated that Exxon’s assertion that Guyana’s oil production, scheduled to commence in mid-2020 at an initial rate of 100,000 barrels per day, will mean “an unprecedented flow of revenue for Guyana that could see its economy grow in double digits for most of the next decade. Given that the discoveries have been made 120 miles from the coastline it is unlikely that the oil would be monetised via pipeline to shore. This raises questions about value-added activity and downstream industries.”
The article referred to a “statistical tool” known as “the Creaming Curve which it says represents the relationship between cumulative resource growth and the number of exploration wells drilled.” Ramnarine wrote that in his opinion Guyana’s Liza 1 and Payara wells are just “the beginning of things to come for Guyana… If the Creaming Curve thesis is correct, Guyana is only at the beginning of what would be a series of discoveries similar to what happened in the North Sea between the late 1960s and the late 1970s. Indeed, the Guyana-Suriname basin may well be the new North Sea.”
