Escort tugs added to support booming FPSO activity in Guyana, mentions a Riviera news source.
Guyana’s booming offshore oil and gas sector
Two new escort tugs that will support Guyana’s booming offshore oil and gas sector were named in a ceremony in June at Georgetown, Guyana.
The 50-m tugs Madam Kalina and A’Rinra were added to the fleet of G-Boats, an affiliate of Edison Chouest Offshore (ECO), Cut Off, Louisiana. Family owned ECO, one of the largest OSV owners in the world, announced the naming ceremony in a social media post.
The names for the tugs were chosen by local Guyanese students who participated in a naming contest.
Sailing under the flag of Vanuatu, the 1,361-gt tugs were built at ECO’s Gulfship in Gulfport, Mississippi. Each tug has an overall length of 50 m, beam of 15 m and depth of 6 m. Each of the tugs is equipped with Caterpillar main engines and Z-drive propulsion, with 24 bunks. They will provide escort, hold-back, hose-handling and maintenance duties in offshore Guyana.
At the naming ceremony, ExxonMobil Guyana president Alistair Routledge said the new boats will operate 161 km offshore of Guyana to support the essential work that takes place to deliver the development of Guyana’s natural resources.
ABS has issued each of the tugs an international load line certificate, ISM-safety management certification, international oil pollution prevention certificate, SOLAS cargo ship safety construction certificate and SOLAS cargo ship safety equipment certificate.
Fast-tracked FPSO activity
The escort tugs support Guyana’s fast-growing deepwater FPSO activity. By year’s end, Guyana will have three floating storage, production and offloading (FPSOs) vessels operating in deepwater fields in the Stabroek block. In April, the FPSO Prosperity sailed to Guyana, joining the FPSOs Liza Destiny and Liza Unity, which are producing more than 380,000 barrels of oil per day (b/d), according to operator ExxonMobil Guyana. Prosperity will develop the Payara field in the offshore Stabroek block. It has an initial production capacity of around 220,000 b/d and an overall storage volume of 2M barrels.
ExxonMobil has taken FID on a fourth FPSO for the Yellowtail project, which will be constructed, leased and operated by SBM Offshore. The addition of One Guyana, Yellowtail’s FPSO, will push production to 810,000 b/d by 2026-2027, according to the country’s Minister of Finance, Dr Ashni Singh. Additional deepwater development could see six FPSOs in operation producing 1M b/d by 2030, said Dr Singh.
Estimates by ExxonMobil suggest Stabroek block holds more than 10Bn oil-equivalent barrels, and the oil major sees the potential for 10 FPSOs in operation to develop the country’s reserves. Dr Singh said this means 1M b/d “could be just half of the production rate Guyana could achieve if ExxonMobil moves forward with such aggressive production targets.”
Within four years, oil revenues to Guyana are forecast to almost double, growing from US$958M in 2022 to US$1.78Bn by 2025. The revenue comes from a production sharing agreement with operator ExxonMobil and its partners in the Stabroek block, Hess and CNOOC.
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Source: Riviera
