THE second annual International Energy Conference and Expo will be held this week from February 14 to 17 in Georgetown. Energy professionals, companies, foreign dignitaries, and Heads of State will come together to discuss the important concerns affecting the energy sector, climate change, and best practices to maximise the benefits of local-content development in both Guyana and the region.

Guyana is uniquely positioned as an emerging producer, and its impact on the region and globe does not go unnoticed. The country has continued to show strong growth in key areas, all of which bode extremely well for all sectors of its economy, not just oil and gas.

Last year, analysts at Rystad Energy published a landmark report concluding that the government’s revenue from domestic production was on track to surpass the $1 billion mark in 2022, and accelerate to US $7.5 billion annually by 2030. In fact, Guyana exceeded expectations, and made US$1.24 billion from oil revenues and royalties in 2022.

Rystad reported that Guyana had a “stellar” 2022, in reference to the record ten new discoveries, which only highlights the fact that Guyana leads in offshore discoveries globally since 2015, with the discovery of nearly 11 billion barrels of oil equivalent accounting for 18 per cent of discovered resources, and 32 per cent of discovered oil. Guyana singlehandedly accounts for 18 of the top 30 largest offshore oil discoveries globally since 2015.

On a regional level, Guyana is seeing a new role for itself as a major energy producer. Guyana’s success was a major theme at last year’s second annual staging of the Suriname Energy, Oil and Gas Summit that brought together regional energy powerhouses, and select key speakers to discuss the state of Suriname’s energy economy.

Suriname has had a small amount of onshore oil production since 1982, and Trinidad has produced oil and gas for more than a century. However, in the short period that Guyana has been an energy-producing State, it has managed to implement policies and legislation that Suriname is only now considering, such as the local-content law. Guyana’s production and revenues have now surpassed Suriname’s by orders of magnitude, and far outpaced Trinidad’s declining production.

Guyana has seen a rapid expansion of training opportunities and certification programmes for local companies, early on, through the industry-funded Centre for Local Business Development (CLBD), an initiative that has received praise regionally and locally. The CLBD was operational in Guyana before First Oil, helping companies align their operations with the services that would be needed in Guyana’s oil-and-gas sector.

These are exciting times for Guyana, as investments from both foreign and domestic sources flow into its economy. Last month, President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali met with India’s Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri during his official visit to India.

The trip culminated with an agreement between the two governments for “government-to-government cooperation across the entire spectrum of the oil & gas sector”. Additionally, President Ali also encouraged Indian firms to participate in Guyana’s upcoming oil-block auction, demonstrating the country’s seriousness about keeping with international best practices around transparency and competitiveness for auctions.

At this week’s conference, there is much to look forward to for Guyana. In 2022, Guyana had a milestone year that saw new production double the country’s revenues, and a historic budget that included billions of Guyanese dollars in oil revenues.

The 2023 national budget will be further impacted by oil, with almost 30 per cent of the spending being funded by oil revenues. Some G$84 billion is earmarked for the health sector, G$94.4 billion for education, and over G$54 billion for the development of new housing schemes and the upgrading of existing ones.

Through the successful performance of the oil-and-gas industry last year, increased spending has also been allocated to supporting projects such as gas-to-energy. The construction of the integrated Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) Plant, and the 300-megawatt (MW) combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant is expected to see critical funding this year, with a more than G$43 billion budgetary allocation. A project like this will help to diversify Guyana’s energy mix, and significantly reduce the cost of electricity for the people.

It is, therefore, safe to say: Guyana has arrived! In that previously-mentioned Rystad report, analysts found that Guyana is on track to be the fourth largest offshore oil producer in the world by 2035, outpacing the U.S., Norway and Mexico. This second annual international energy conference is another opportunity for Guyana to showcase to the world just how far it has come, and how much further it can go.