The final draft of the Local Content Policy for Guyana’s oil and gas sector has been completed and is expected to be presented to the private sector and other relevant stakeholders in two weeks, head of the Department of Energy Dr Mark Bynoe said yesterday.
“Presently, more than 1,100 Guyanese are working with EEPGL [Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited] and its subcontractors, representing 15% of the workforce within the industry,” Bynoe told a press conference at the Ministry of Presidency.
He emphasised that EEPGL is also currently working with the Council for Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) towards implementing two pilots to build capacity within the technical institutions. He added the department is continuing to seek to ensure that the sector is managed in an effective and efficient manner, and will not spare any effort in ensuring that Guyanese are able to optimize from the value from the resource.
Bynoe said the final draft will cover loopholes, such as the definition of local, how local content is specifically measured as it relates to Guyana as well as the critical elements that have to be focused on.
At the same time, he said it is also important that the requisite framework by which data is captured has a standardised format that comes from the country and not the operators.
As a result, he said that the Department is currently setting up a local content compliance unit, which is expected to not only validate information being provided but to also receive any potential issues or concerns from Guyanese contractors or suppliers.
“In terms of granularity [of data received], yes we have seen an improvement but this is a dynamic process and so there is still other more granular information that we have asked the operator to provide to us [so] that we are better able to analyse who is getting what, what is going where, [and] which regions are benefitting more than others,” he explained.
Given the current political situation, in wake of the passage of a no-confidence motion against government, Bynoe was asked whether the Department is concerned that the needed legislation and legislative changes might not be in place for first oil.
To this, he said that there will always be extraneous factors that are outside of the Department’s control and as a result it focusses on what it can do as a department. As a result, it has been focussing on ensuring they put the requisite frameworks in place. “What happens beyond that is outside of the control of the Department but as technical officers our mandate is to do the best we can for the people of Guyana,” Bynoe said.
Bynoe was also questioned on whether the Department has hired more experts, to which he said yes. He noted that they are hiring a Commercial Specialist and a Crude (oil) Lifting and Marketing Specialist that are expected to be on the job within another three weeks.
“I mentioned the whole issue of hiring the legal firm because we did not want to go with individual consultants given the range and breadth of the legal matters to be dealt with, not only within the Department but within other entities that are also mandated to help or assist in the management for this sector,” he said.
As it relates to the legislative framework, the document for the international oil and gas law firm is in its final stages of and a selection is expected to be made in the last quarter of this year. The law firm will then commence consultations across institutions for preparation of draft laws and regulations that will have to be submitted to the National Assembly.
