Guyana, one of the fastest-growing crude producers in the world, sees little threat from US President Donald Trump's pledge to flood global markets with cheap supplies.
Despite Trump's vow to scrap a slew of regulations he claims are holding back US oil producers, Guyana's vice president Bharrat Jagdeo does not expect there to be a "major supply response."
"If the prices come down, as President Trump wants, then it would also make some of the existing operations in the US — particular with (hydraulic fracturing) fracking — it may make them not feasible," Jagdeo said on the first day of the Guyana Energy Conference and Supply Chain Expo in Georgetown, Guyana, on Tuesday.
Guyana's low breakeven costs and the quality of its crude will help it to maintain a competitive advantage going forward, he said.
The vice president shrugged off concerns over the oil market as concerns grow over waning demand from China, the top importer.
He pointed out that ExxonMobil just started the approval process for its seventh and eighth projects in the giant Stabroek block offshore Guyana, where the discovery of oil in 2015 has transformed the economic fortunes of the tiny South American nation.
"They (ExxonMobil) study the oil markets, they probably know the oil markets more than any government official," Jagdeo said. "Clearly they see in the future a demand for fossil fuel, and they believe that in Guyana we have a unique opportunity to supply that market."
Demand for fossil fuels is likely to remain "relatively high" for the foreseeable future while renewable sources lag behind, he said.
Guyana, located on South America's northern coast bordering Venezuela, Suriname, and Brazil, has become a fast-growing non-Opec supplier since oil was first pumped in 2019. Output has accelerated to 650,000 b/d from zero in the space of around five years. And gross output is seen growing further to 1.3mn b/d by the end of the decade as new projects come online.
