Guyana, which is considered to be home of the biggest oil discovery in recent years, is ranked third, along with Australia and Angola, for global deployment of Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSOs) vessels, during the period 2020-2025.
With oil production expected to be significantly ramped up in the coming years, Guyana is expected to deploy three more FPSOs within the five-year period.
According to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, while all of the three deployments of Australia and Angola are announced projects, Guyana has two announced and one planned project during the outlook period.
In its recent report titled: ‘Global FPSO Industry Outlook, 2020−2025 – Petrobras Drives Global Upcoming FPSO Deployments’, GlobalData reveals that a total of 18 planned and announced FPSO projects are expected to be deployed offshore Brazil during the outlook period 2020–2025, the highest among the countries globally.
“Among the 18 upcoming FPSO’s to be deployed in Brazil by 2025, eight are planned with identified development plans while nine are early-stage announced FPSOs that are undergoing conceptual studies and may be approved for development. Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras), the state-owned company of Brazil, leads the operators’ list with seven FPSOs,” the report states.
GlobalData identifies the UK as the second highest country globally with five upcoming FPSOs by 2025. Four of the upcoming FPSOs in the country are announced FPSOs.
The top five countries are expected to contribute more than three quarters of global crude production capacity through FPSOs by 2025.
In Guyana’s case, the first FPSO to have been deployed here; Liza Destiny, has started producing oil since December 2019.
The completion of Guyana’s second FPSO, Liza Unity, is on schedule and is expected to be deployed in 2022. SBM Offshore commenced the construction phase of the Liza Unity FPSO following ExxonMobil’s final investment decision (FID) on the Liza Phase 2 development, in May 2019.
The Liza Unity, is expected to produce 220,000 barrels of oil per day. The vessel will be spread moored in a water depth of about 1,600 meters and will be able to store around two million barrels of crude oil.
Additionally, the third FPSO; Prosperity, will be deployed for the yet-to-be approved Payara-Pacora development project. Prosperity will produce 220,000 barrels of oil per day.
President Irfaan Ali’s new Administration is currently engaging international experts to review the project proposal before it makes a decision on the Payara-Pacora project in the Stabroek Block.
After being plagued with delays, Exxon was hoping that the Payara project would have gotten off the ground late this year. The project was originally supposed to start in 2019, but was delayed due to the absence of a functioning Government.
The fourth FPSO will be deployed for ExxonMobil’s 4th proposed development project; Hammerhead, which is expected to produce between 150,000 – 190,000 bpd.
US oil giant, Exxon has estimated that there are eight billion barrels of recoverable reserves in the Stabroek Block, and until recently, it predicted that the country would produce 750,000 barrels of oil per day by 2025.
According to experts, 750,000 barrels of oil per day would make Guyana the fourth-largest oil producer in Latin America in current production growth, that would be behind Brazil, Mexico and Columbia.
In a couple of years, this would place Guyana as one of the largest sources of non-OPEC supplier.
