Brazil has responded positively to an invitation, issued by President David Granger, for the South American Economic giant to participate in Guyana’s oil and gas sector, during his attendance at the recently concluded MERCOSUR summit, a release from the Department of Public Information has said.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Greenidge said this is an indication of growing confidence in this country’s oil sector.
“It means a great deal as you know since the discovery of commercial quantities of oil by Exxon Mobil in the maritime space there has been a number of additional discoveries. At least five of them have yielded results that are of significant quantities and extremely positive commercially. For that reason, we have been able to attract attention to the resource in the sense that many companies and countries are now interested in seeing what is going on in Guyana”, Greenidge added.
In addition, the Foreign Affairs Minister views the involvement of Brazil in the local oil and gas sector as not only an economic boost, but rather a comforting presence given the threats from neighbouring Venezuela.
“It is important, this discussion with Brazil because for a number of reasons, including the strategic threat posed by Venezuela, many companies are not interested and many of those that were interested, didn’t have the resources and weren’t prepared to commit resources given the threat. Now that you have established that a company is operating, there it is no longer a completely unknown space. It is now for us to try to attract other investors. This is a big issue; you don’t want to be dependent. You don’t want to be left in a situation where you are dependent only upon one medium. What you are looking at here is the need to encourage, by way of providing the policy space at Guyana’s end for other entities to participate” said the Foreign Affairs Minister.
Meanwhile, Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman noted the two countries have been collaborators since the early eighties and he is happy for the re-engagement, given the benefits to be had by the country.
“Now we are looking at petroleum development, and two areas of particular of course are the actual production exploration and production. Petrobras is a known world leader in production; as well as in the training and technical sides, they have decades of experience that we don’t have, and they can help train some of our people”, Trotman said.
In addition, Trotman stated, Guyana stands to benefit in more ways than one from the renewed partnership with Brazil.
“I can’t begin to explain how great it would be for Guyana to have Brazil. Brazil has always been a kind of big brother to Guyana. It has never raised a threatening hand. It has always been there to help so it would be a great sense of comfort and security knowing that Brazil has investment in our petroleum sector”, Trotman added.
Brazil’s National Oil company Petrobras which was established in 1953, specialises in exploration and production, refining, marketing, transportation, petrochemicals, oil product distribution, natural gas, electricity, chemical-gas and biofuels.
