The Prosperity, the floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel which is producing oil in ExxonMobil’s third project offshore Guyana, is expected to reach full production capacity within the next two months.
This is according to Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat during his presentation to the National Assembly on Tuesday as the budget debates continue.
Minister Bharrat told the National Assembly, “We will have three FPSOs producing at maximum capacity, giving us 650,000 barrels of oil per day. We’re also in the process of approving six projects, which will take us to almost 850,000 to 900,000 barrels between 2025 and 2026. The future for us looks bright.”
In April 2023, the Prosperity FPSO, constructed by SBM Offshore, arrived in Guyana to join the other FPSOs – Liza Destiny and Liza Unity.
Prosperity will develop the Payara field in the offshore Stabroek Block. It has an initial production capacity of around 220,000 barrels of oil per day, and an overall storage volume of two million barrels.
Currently, the combined Payara and Liza phases One and Two projects are producing over 550,000 barrels of oil per day. In 2024, production in the oil and gas sector is expected to be ramped up by 45.7 percent.
The Stabroek Block is 6.6 million acres (26,800 square kilometres). Exxon, through its local subsidiary Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL), holds 45 per cent interest in the block. Hess Guyana Exploration Ltd holds 30 per cent interest, and CNOOC Petroleum Guyana Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNOOC Limited, holds the remaining 25 per cent interest. ExxonMobil has said it anticipates at least six projects offshore Guyana will be online by 2027, with possibly 10 FPSOs being operational by 2030.
Production has already started on the Liza Phases 1 and 2 projects, as well as the third development, Payara. Yellowtail and Uaru, Exxon’s fourth and fifth developments, have already received governmental approval.
The third project – the Payara development – will target an estimated resource base of about 600 million oil-equivalent barrels, and was at one point considered to be the largest single planned investment in the history of Guyana.
Meanwhile, the Yellowtail development, which will be oil giant ExxonMobil’s fourth development in Guyana’s waters, will turn out to be the single largest development so far in terms of barrels per day of oil, with a mammoth 250,000 bpd targeted.
Following the One Guyana FPSO, the next FPSO, expected to come online for the Uaru project, is the Errea Witte FPSO. This FPSO is named after a Warrau word that means ‘abundance’, and is expected to start up in 2027.
The government also confirmed last year that the sixth FPSO vessel earmarked for the Whiptail project will be dubbed the Jaguar FPSO.
