Former Presidential Advisor and Petroleum Consultant, Dr. Jan Mangal is of the firm view that Guyana cannot have a proper assessment of ExxonMobil’s Payara Field Development Plan (FDP) completed in less than two weeks. The transparency advocate made these comments following the announcement by the PPP Government that it has hired Canadian lawyer and former Alberta Premier, Alison Redford. The consultant is expected to complete the review by August 24.
Upon noting this, Dr. Mangal in several posts on his Facebook page said that the field development plan cannot be adequately evaluated by an individual in a couple months much less weeks.
He stressed that Field Development Plans need a whole team of experts as it is a technical job. He said, “…It needs facility experts for the stuff on the surface, it needs subsurface experts for the reservoir, it needs drilling/production experts, it needs flow assurance experts, it needs marine and meta-ocean experts, it needs operations experts, it needs cost/scheduling experts, it needs commercial experts, and export pipeline experts, etc.”
The former Presidential Advisor said, “If this government accepts that one expert can do a review in a couple months, then we have not progressed from where we were with (former Natural Resources Minister, Raphael) Trotman in 2016/2017…”
The transparency advocate stressed that Guyana should not compromise its review of the FDP by hiring one Canadian as a favor to Canada for supporting the nation’s democracy against the 2020 election riggers. He categorically stated that the review of any FDP for a project like Payara should take more than six months at a minimum and could take a year or more if the relevant authorities were to challenge ExxonMobil on important issues in the FDP, which they should.
In conclusion, Dr. Mangal said, “If the PPP does a crap review by one Canadian in a couple weeks, then we are back to the days of Trotman, Greenidge, et al., and the crappy Stabroek Block contract.”
The Payara development plan includes a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, named Prosperity; it is expected to produce 220,000 barrels per day. The development is similar to that of Liza phase 1 and 2. Payara will have up to 45 wells, including production wells, water injection wells and gas injection wells. The Payara development startup is expected as early as 2023.
