Aramco Wins Guyana Oil Tender

Saudi Aramco has won a tender for the purchase of crude oil from Guyana and will likely enter into a one-year deal for the marketing of the commodity, Reuters reports, citing a Guyanese government official.

Aramco vied for the contract with 15 companies when Guyana launched the tender last month, but it was only awarded one loading for now, the natural resource minister of Guyana, Vikram Bharat, told Reuters. Bharat added the Saudi major will probably get a one-year contract, but the process has not yet been completed.

Aramco was the lowest bidder in the oil tender, offering a commission of $0.025 per barrel, the minister also said.

Guyana is a newcomer on the oil production scene but with great promise, as Exxon and Hess keep making discovery after discovery in the offshore blocks they operate, so far tapping into 9 billion barrels of reserves. For now, they are also the only actual producers of oil in the tiny South American country. The loading awarded to Aramco will be the country's fourth this year.

Guyana and neighbor Suriname, with which the country shares the prolific Guyana-Suriname basin, are eager to exploit their newly discovered oil reserves in a race with the energy transition.

"We have been called to leave our oil in the ground. We believe that's totally unfair," Guyana vice president Bharrat Jagdeo said last month at the Offshore Technology Conference in Texas. "Being a small country, we will not have the capacity and the framework for an optimum operation of the oil industry right now, but we will continue improving."

Upstream Online reported last month that the Guyana-Suriname Basin could see 10 drilling rigs in 2022 as exploration in the area accelerates. Exxon already has six drillships in Guyana waters, and TotalEnergies has deployed two in Suriname waters. The report notes that 15 companies in total hold drilling rights to acreage in the basin.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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