Exploring investment opportunities
A DELEGATION from Aruba, led by its Minister of Finance, Communication, Utilities and Energy, Mike de Meza, is here and is exploring opportunities for collaboration with Guyana. The visiting team yesterday paid a visit to Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Robert Persaud, at his office in the compound of the Office of the President, Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, Georgetown, to discuss possible investment opportunities and other areas of collaboration between Guyana and Aruba.
The Aruban Minister said, “There is a lot of interest from Aruba to work together with Guyana, in different sectors, on different topics”.
He said tourism is one such area, since Aruba is known to be a very aggressive tourism-oriented country, with about 100,000 people living on the island, which sees over 1.6 million tourists visiting annually.
“We could be of benefit to Guyana if Guyana is interested in that direction; but at the same time, we would like to also discuss possibilities of exchange of information on alternative energy. Today, we are to go on an oil and gas rig to take a look at what Guyana is doing,” he said.
To this end, he said, “We are busy in Aruba also doing studies to see if Aruba has oil or gas reserves in the waters off Aruba, and prospects are pretty high, and we wanted to come visit because you know one of the companies that we are dealing with is Repsol, and they are doing similar work for you in Guyana”.
“So we decided to come visit Guyana, and also at the same time, to pay a courtesy visit to the Government of Guyana to initiate a relationship with Aruba”.
Alluding to agriculture, he said they are very interested in this, as Guyana is a very strong agriculture-oriented country.
“Aruba is fairly dry when it comes to that, and we would like to see what the possibilities are for Aruba to benefit from the agriculture that Guyana can provide to Aruba; and create some agri business relationships.”
Minister de Meza, who is on his first visit here, said that Guyanese are doing very well in Aruba. “They are welcome; they have been living with us for many, many years, very good citizens”.
Minister Persaud welcomed the team, and discussed what is taking place in terms of oil exploration, including off-shore drilling activities by Repsol, as well as that of another oil giant, CGX.
“As they will advise you, we have the Jaguar currently drilling. We are expecting some form of news, hopefully good news, in the near future, and we just completed the drilling of another one by CGX,” he said.
He said there is much interest, with close to six companies that have already acquired acreage to conduct exploration here, and Guyana will be willing to share its limited experience in this regard, and provide information from “government to government”.
“We are very happy that Repsol got involved, demonstrated the interest, and certainly fulfilled the requirements. We do hope that we have a discovery, that is what we are counting on,” he said.
The team, which arrived yesterday morning, leaves today.