2 weeks Ago
The Guyana government says it has not entered into any agreement with India regarding the sale of crude oil to the Asian country, even as it left open the possibility of that being undertaken in the future. “We have not discussed any element of direct transaction for the sale of our crude to India,” Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo told reporters as the Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ended an official visit to Guyana. The communique issued following bilateral talks between the two countries “is very clear” and the two countries have expressed an interest in collaborating in several areas.
“India has enormous expertise in many areas, but also clean energy, India is leading in solar in the world...
on the fertiliser plant they are doing some studies for us to use the gas to build a fertiliser plant. “So in the whole hydrocarbon sector, there are lots of areas we can utilise Indian skills, Indian technology and also Indian investments. “We have not discussed any element of a direct sale to India at this stage because our crude for the next year, we have people who will market our crude.
We just went through a public process for tender, and two companies won the right to market our crude for next year,” said Jagdeo. Jagdeo said in the communique “there’s lot to work on and in the future, I think, if it makes sense for both parties..
.we should work towards something like that. We don’t have a problem with that, but there is nothing that we have worked on that will result in any sale of crude in the next year or so because we already have people to market our crude,” Jagdeo said.
He told reporters some of the Indian companies do buy from other places “that market our crude, so some of our crude have gone to India already”. Asked what would make it more likely for an agreement to be reached in the future, Jagdeo replied, “I do not want to speculate before there is a specific proposal on the table. But those concerns have been raised a long while a back, not now.
“We met about, maybe two years ago and the companies that came from India, they were making the same point...
that for it to be economic they should have larger-size lifts and also because of the higher price they have to pay for freight. “Those points were made earlier..
.and I guess they still remain relevant and there was no specific discussion on this trip of any of those. But we are looking forward to working with India (and) as I explained earlier, India is a major power and there may be a time maybe when there is an over-supply of the market, we may have to go to long-term contracts, but the time is not now.
” Meanwhile, Jagdeo also indicated US oil giant Exxon Mobil and partners have withdrawn from negotiations with the government over terms for exploring and developing a shallow-water oil field. Exxon, US-based Hess and China’s CNOOC won offshore block S8 in a bidding round launched in late 2022 by the government in a bid to diversify Guyana’s energy sector. The companies had been negotiating non-tax terms of the project this year.
“Exxon pulled out,” Jagdeo said, adding “they wanted to use the area for carbon capture and storage, and we don’t want to do that at this time.” Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat recently said partners Hess and CNOOC have also pulled out of the talks. Eight of the 14 oil and gas blocks Guyana offered in the round received bids, including from major companies such as Petronas, CNOOC and TotalEnergies.
The government last month said TotalEnergies, Qatar Energy, Petronas, Cybele Energy, Delcorp and International Group Investment had signed agreements with Guyana on the terms of production-sharing agreements. It added that an agreement for Exxon’s area was “under review”, without going into details..
