Guyana has canceled a revised tender to market its crude entitlement from the ExxonMobil-operated deepwater Stabroek block and is assessing direct offers from international companies, vice president Bharrat Jagdeo said.
The government relaunched the tender in August 2020, and Russia's Lukoil presented the only qualified bid among 29 companies that submitted bids by an October 2020 deadline, Jagdeo said.
"The process was unacceptable as it was nonsensical and not competitive because of criteria set by the previous government," Jagdeo said, without giving details.
The government of President Irfaan Ali that was inaugurated in August 2020 instead sought offers for marketing the next two two 1mn bl cargoes from ExxonMobil and its Stabroek partners US independent Hess and Chinese state-owned CNOOC unit Nexen, and Hess offered the best terms, he said.
Hess lifted the country's fourth 1mn bl cargo in January and will take delivery of the second one this month. The first three 1mn bl cargoes were awarded to Shell in a restricted opening tender.
Jagdeo did not indicate when the government would complete its evaluation of the direct offers made by prospective marketers.
The government relaunched the tender after cancelling a bidding round initiated by the former administration during a period of political uncertainty that followed 2 March 2020 parliamentary elections.
Among the companies vying in the now-canceled tender were Hess, Shell, Equinor, Total, traders Gunvor and Glencore, and the UK trading arm of Saudi Arabia's Aramco.
Guyana had scheduled five lifts of its entitlement in 2020 but did not achieve this because of lower-than-projected output from Stabroek caused by recurring problem with a gas compression unit. Output is currently running around 120,000 b/d, ExxonMobil says.
The government expects to market "five or six" 1mn bl cargoes of its share of the 32.1°API Liza crude in 2021, natural resources minister Vickram Bharrat told Argus in January.
ExxonMobil started production on Stabroek in December 2019 and forecasts output of 750,000 b/d by 2026.
Guyana's income from oil through royalties and the crude exports has reached $206.6mn, Jagdeo said. The funds are being held in a new sovereign wealth fund at the Federal Reserve in New York.
