-to be held in February

THE Guyana Suppliers’ Forum, which provides an occasion for local businesses to gain valuable insights, and access existing and upcoming activities and opportunities in the oil-and-gas sector, will be held virtually this year and is set for 1 – 5 February.
The forum, which is hosted by the Centre for Local Business Development (CLBD) in partnership with ExxonMobil, provides a unique virtual platform for Guyanese suppliers to receive up-to-date information on the procurement process, key contacts, upcoming tenders and longer term directly from ExxonMobil Guyana and its leading prime contractors.

“The overarching goal of the forum is to provide Guyanese businesses with valuable insights and access to the activities that exist and are upcoming in the oil-and-gas sector,” a statement by the CLBD noted.

Chairman of the Private Sector Commission (PSC), Nicholas Boyer, lauded the hosting of the forum as a vital means of ensuring that local businesses are informed and are given an opportunity to benefit from Guyana’s oil-and-gas sector.
“It’s important for these forums to happen to connect Exxon “tier one” suppliers with the Guyanese businesses which have the capacity to supply them with goods and services; and it is important for the private sector of Guyana to participate, so that we get that two-way information happening,” Boyer told this newspaper.

He further explained that, “We need to learn what products and services they need and they need to learn what products and services we can provide. When we learn what they need, we can add capacity; when they learn what we can supply, we can talk about pricing, and timing of getting those services to them.”

Some 300 local businesses attended the forum when it was first held in 2018 at the Marriott Hotel in Kingston, Georgetown. This year, the forum will feature presentations from the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Private Sector Commission, ExxonMobil Guyana, Tullow, and 10 prime contractors from the oil-and-gas sector. The presentations will be done on the first day of the event, while February 2-5, will be used for discussions.

Some of the prime contractors that will be fielding questions include drillship operators such as NobleDrilling Services, and Stena Drillin Ltd; subsea control systems-specialists such as Saipem; geophysical firms that conduct seismic surveys, such as TechnipFMC; oilfield services company Schlumberger and others such as Guyana Deepwater Offshore/SBM, Guyana Shorebase Inc, G-Boats, Halliburton, Baker Hughes and NABI-KCL.

To participate, suppliers must be registered with the CLBD, and can do so on the centre’s website supplier registration portal at clbdportal.com. The CLBD was established by Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Ltd, an affiliate of ExxonMobil Corporation in collaboration with DAI Global, LLC.

It was established in 2017 to assist small and medium-sized Guyanese businesses build capacity and improve their competitiveness and more than 2,000 Guyanese businesses are registered with the centre, to date.