THE Guyana Petroleum Summit, which will feature a number of key Guyanese companies and state players, and which will see presentations from respected industry leaders, will take place in Houston, Texas on Thursday.

The event is to be held at the Marriott Marquis, Downtown Houston. Among the entities participating is TotalTec Oilfield Services. President and CEO of TotalTec, Lars Mangal, said the event is a chance for the various local and international companies to navigate the opportunities of the “world’s most exciting new offshore deep-water oil province.”

“As one of the major new oil regions discovered this century, Guyana will be transformed in the coming years, with the country emerging as a leading global oil producer.”

He said that with the summit, Guyana and international industry leaders and investors will provide a highly informative day of successes, challenges and a view of the future for the deep-water province of the decade. “The Guyana Petroleum Summit will serve as a platform to navigate this new province, bringing together ministry officials, international, national and independent oil and gas operators, regulators, investors, contractors and service companies,” he said.

Calling Houston Texas the ‘global centre for the oil and gas industry’, Mangal said that several key representatives from Guyana will be speaking and presenting at the event, including a world-class panel of industry experts. Apart from Mangal, others down to present are Anthony Paul, a local content expert from Trinidad; Attorney-at-Law, Nigel Hughes; former Trinidad Minister of Energy, Kevin Ramnarine; former Presidential Adviser, Jan Mangal; Attorney-at-Law, Charles Ramson Jr and others representing Chatham House, Schlumberger, the US Embassy Georgetown, Wood Mackenzie, among many others.

Mangal said that the discoveries and rapid pace to production will require the Government of Guyana to work hand-in-hand with some of the world’s largest and most sophisticated multi-national corporations, on an accelerated timeline “to establish a regulatory framework and build infrastructure to support this new industry.”

He noted that operators, service companies and contractors are rapidly ramping-up their operations, recruiting and training Guyanese, and preparing facilities to support the new business. “The challenges are immense, but the oil industry has a proven history of overcoming. “The key is that all participants work together, collaborate and get things right from the start,” he said.

He noted that the summit will help draw the road map for how Guyana can best harness the economic benefits as it establishes its own oil and gas industry, recognising that the industry giants coming in have their own stakeholders with their expectations.

BUSY BOOTH
Meanwhile, President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Nicholas Boyer, told the Guyana Chronicle that based on the traffic flow, the first day has been really successful. “You have a lot of people talking, networking, learning, visiting our booths and finding out a lot more about Guyana: this new frontier for the oil industry,” GCCI President said. He referred to the energy experienced at the Guyana booth as “extremely positive”, which he assured will result in a number of partnerships, both in Houston and elsewhere. “Clearly there’s a lot of interest in our market and what we were able to do, as a delegation that includes both government and private sector, is answer questions about how to enter the Guyanese market and I think that is going to be the tipping point for firms who were on the fence,” Boyer said.

The GCCI president added that given the interest shown on just the first day, the entire contingent is looking forward to the coming days. The mission focuses on two primary activities which are a booth display with an area for business-to-business (B2B) meetings and a Guyana Night for Information Sharing and Business Networking on May 8, 2019.
Attorney-at-Law, Nigel Hughes, representing his firm – the Hughes, Field and Stoby Law Firm – stated that day one of the conference was fruitful for the firm which was able to network with the masses. “Not only have we met some very interesting people, but we have made some very, very useful contacts that I’m pretty confident will result in translating to good business,” he said.

Hughes projected that very soon, several of the connections made during the conference will result in follow-up visits to Guyana for business collaboration. “The interest in Guyana is really peaking,” Hughes began. “Everybody that has come here, including the people that built the top site for the first FPSO, are extremely enthusiastic about Guyana. People are making plans based our meetings here today to come down to Guyana and I would say that we have generated a significant amount of interest in Guyana, not only in oil and gas, but as a country for investment.”

Present too was GO-Invest Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Owen Verwey, who emphasised the importance of the country’s representation at the conference. “We’re emerging as an oil and gas nation and we’ve had little or no experience in this area. The opportunity to come here is largely to bring businesses from Guyana to get exposure for knowledge awareness and for a better understanding of what happens in the industry; what is the value chain and who are the major players in the industry,” Verwey said.

Even as the businesses rack-up experience in this regard, the CEO stated that they also have the opportunity to network with businesses in the oil and gas industry as a means to “open doors of opportunity”. Verwey said that even before the booths were open on day one of the conference, persons visited the Guyana location to check out the various booths.

He stated that the level of interest shown is along the lines of what GO-Invest and GGCI expected. “We saw people at the booth trying to understand more and more of the opportunities in Guyana and businesses that are here, so that they can seek partnership opportunities and get a better understanding of how to do business in Guyana,” he said.

“We’re very happy for that. It’s now past half of the day; we’re going towards the end of the day and we continue to see high traffic here. I think by the end of the next two days we would have made a very big impact in the market itself, particularly for the businesses we brought here, and that’s what we really wanted to do.”

The CEO noted that he has been a part of some of the B2B meetings hosting at the site and he was very impressed by the scales of companies interacting with the Guyanese businesses. He added that the businesses attending were thus far pleased with the returns of their investment in being a part of the conference.

He also stated that more and more local businesses in Guyana are becoming interested in the oil and gas sector as it continues to work its way up towards becoming the dominant sector. “I have no doubt that when we do this the second time around, we will see far more interest from Guyanese companies to be here and to seek their opportunities,” Verwey said.

Boyer agreed with the line of thought, as he stated: “The local companies are very interested in participating in the sector…I think that the Guyanese [businesses] are up to the challenge in terms of learning the various parts of the supply chain and seeing which pieces of it we can bring onshore.”

The businesses participating in the mission include: Roraima Airways; A&S Enterprises Ltd.; Dapper Technology; Guyana Oil and Gas Support Services; Guyana Oil and Gas Support Chambers; Environmental Management Consultancy; Sterling Products Ltd.; Guyana National Industrial Company; Fohrsight Global Consultants Inc.; Hughes, Field and Stoby; Ramson & Conway & Associates; Guyana National Shipping Corporation; Laparkan Trading; JAPARTS; Rid-O-Pes/Sandip Disposal; Omni Helicopters International; Guyana Logistics and Support Services Inc.; Massiah Capital; IEM Sales & Services Ltd.; New GPC; Action Invest; Ramps Logistics; Tagman Media; Western Logistics; GTT; Merchant Marine Services Guyana Inc. and CTES.