ExxonMobil Guyana Limited announced on Tuesday that it could make the Final Investment Decision (FID) for the Whiptail Project in the first quarter of 2024. Specifically, the company’s Head, Alistair Routledge noted that the field development plan for the sixth Stabroek Block Project was submitted since October 13 to Guyanese authorities.
“So that has commenced the process on all the regulatory fronts as you are aware,” the Country Manager said. He added that when the project comes on stream by the end of 2027, it will bring Guyana’s installed capacity for production facilities to above 1.2 million barrels of oil per day. “This is really quite outstanding to think that within eight years of first production Guyana could achieve over 1.2 million barrels of oil per day,” Routledge said.
He also confirmed that the project could cost as much as US$13B.
According to project documents, Whiptail will be capable of producing 250,000 barrels of crude per day (bpd). The floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel will have an oil storage capacity of 2 million barrels. It will be able to offload crude to a tanker every three to six days, once the project is producing optimally.
Currently, Exxon and its partners in the Stabroek Block have two projects, Liza Phase One and Liza Phase Two, producing about 400,000 barrels of oil per day.
A third project, Payara is set to come on stream by year-end and add another 220,000 barrels of oil to Guyana’s oil output.
The fourth sanctioned development, Yellowtail, is expected to come online in 2025 with a gross production capacity of approximately 250,000 barrels of oil per day.
Uaru, the fifth development on the Stabroek Block, is expected to start up in 2026 and have a production capacity of approximately 250,000 gross barrels of oil per day. These five projects alone are worth over US$40B.
Since the discovery of oil in 2015, Exxon and its partners have spent more than US$1.2B with Guyanese suppliers. Guyanese represent 69 percent of its workforce.
