A NATIONAL outreach programme to provide information and answer questions on the emerging oil and gas sector will be launched this month by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Government Information Agency (GINA) has reported.

Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, in a recent interview with GINA, said his team is in the process of finalising the outreach programme, which is expected to be rolled out in mid-February.

“We hope to go to all 10 regions and to as many villages and communities as possible and we hope at the same time not to go by ourselves, but to work in tandem with other ministries,” Minister Trotman is quoted as saying.

The outreach programme will also engage the diaspora and provide special briefing to the parliamentary opposition, civil society, private sector commission, the diaspora and other specialty groups and institutions.

The outreach programme will also engage the diaspora and provide special briefing to the parliamentary opposition, civil society, private sector commission, the diaspora and other speciality groups and institutions. Minister Trotman said further that information will also be disseminated by utilising the television, radio, newspapers and pamphlets. There are also plans to engage school-aged children, the Minister noted.

BENEFITS
The outreach seeks to address the pressing questions such as how can people benefit, where the money will go, how the money will be used in communities and measures to deal with an oil spill.  “(We are going) to answer as many of the questions as possible and if we don’t have the answer immediately, to commit to providing them as soon as possible,” Minister Trotman said in his interview with GINA.

Information on the oil find, government’s developmental plans for the sector, how the revenue will be spent and who the government is working with, will also be shared with citizens.

Guyana is expected to begin oil production by 2020. The country made its first oil discovery of commercial quantities back in 2015 by ExxonMobil and its partners, who were exploring the Liza well in the 6.6 million acres Stabroek Block located offshore Guyana. Last year it was officially announced that the find is of commercial oil quantities equivalent to more than 1.4 billion barrels of recoverable high quality crude oil.

Earlier this month, Exxon and its partners also made another significant oil find in the Payara-1 well.