Guyana relaunches tender for crude marketer

Guyana has relaunched a tender for a one-year contract to market the government's share of Liza crude from the ExxonMobil-operated Stabroek block.

The tender will close on 22 September, the natural resources ministry said yesterday.

The South American country's new government, which was installed in early August after a five-month political standoff, canceled a tender initiated by the former administration to market a minimum of five 1mn bl cargoes of 32.1°API Liza crude in 2020-21.

The original tender was "unfair" to many companies that "acted decently and did not put in a bid because they recognized that there was an illegal government in place," vice president Bharrat Jagdeo said on 15 August in announcing the cancellation. "We made it clear in the campaign that companies should not be submitting bids to an illegal government that was there at that time."

The former government had shortlisted 19 bidders out of an initial 34 interested parties to market the country's crude entitlement, including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Equinor, Total, traders Vitol and Glencore, and Brazil's state-controlled Petrobras. It is not clear if a new shortlist will be issued.

The reopened tender "will bring more transparency to the process," natural resources minister Vickram Bharrat said, as neither he nor the president would play a role in selecting the winner.

Guyana awarded the first three cargoes of its share of Liza production to Shell Western Supply and Trading in a restricted opening tender. The first 1mn bl allotment loaded in February 2020, the second in May and the final in early August.

Liza is produced by the ExxonMobil-led consortium at deepwater Stabroek, where production began in December 2019. The US major's minority partners are US independent Hess and Chinese state-owned CNOOC unit Nexen.

Production is expected to reach 120,000 b/d by the end of August, ramping up to 750,000 b/d in 2025.

By Canute James