GUYANA will be leveraging the expertise of Ghanian officials, who will be here over the next few days, to create a solid architecture for the management of its oil and gas sector, Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo has said.

Vice-President Jagdeo announced, during a press conference on Monday, that the Ghanian team, which was expected in Guyana last evening, comprises Deputy Minister of Energy, Andrew Mercer; Chief Executive Officer of the Ghanian Petroleum Commission, Egbert Faibille Jnr.; Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Gas Company, Dr. Benjamin Asante; Director of Local Content at the Petroleum Commission, Kwaku Boateng and Senior Technical Manager at the Ghana National Gas Company, Abraham Mensah.

This visit by the high-level Ghanian team follows several visits by officials of the African nation, including its President Nana Akufo-Addo, to Guyana and, most recently, Vice-President Jagdeo’s visit to Ghana.

Added to that, the Vice-President of Ghana, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, is also expected to visit Guyana later in the year, while President Akufo-Addo is gearing up for a visit himself in February 2022, just in time to participate in Guyana’s oil and gas conference.

While in Guyana, the team of experts will work with local officials on the finalisation of the local content legislation and will assist in the amendment of the Natural Resources Fund (NRF) legislation.

“We are going to utilise the skills of the people from Ghana to assist us in creating the architecture for the management of the [oil and gas] industry,” Jagdeo said.

Further, he related: “We have had a lot of consultants from northern countries and elsewhere, but it is time we go to a country that has had to work with building the industry from scratch in the shortest period of time.”

Specific to the NRF, the Ghanian officials will be working with local authorities to develop a formula which would allow even the average Guyanese to understand and track how income from the oil and gas sector is earned and spent.

Guyana has so far earned US$436 million from the sale of 7,056,262 barrels of oil. The country sold its first one million barrels of crude on February 19, 2020, raking in nearly US$55 million.

In its second million-barrel sale, the country received US$35 million, and another US$46 million as proceeds from the sale of its third million-barrel of crude, and US$49.3 million from its fourth oil lift.

In early March, Guyana also received US$61,090,968 (approximately G$13 billion) from the sale of the nation’s fifth oil lift. Further, it earned in excess of US$60 million from the sale of its sixth oil lift, and received US$13.9 million in royalties during the first quarter of this year.

It was reported, in May, that the country’s total revenue is expected to increase by 17 per cent, with earnings in the petroleum sector alone reaching well over US$500 million by the end of this year. With oil prices on a continuous rise, that figure could further skyrocket.

The President of Guyana, Dr. Irfaan Ali had said that the oil revenues must be used to strengthen existing opportunities in Guyana and to open new opportunities for investment, economic growth and social development, among other areas.