The government of Guyana has decided it wants natural gas produced at the offshore Liza discovery to be piped more than 120 miles to shore to be used for industrial feedstock or power generation.
Guyana Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman told local business leaders in Georgetown that the government had decided it wanted to bring the gas to shore, according to a report from Guyana’s Government Information Agency (GINA).
Trotman said he had been told by Liza operator ExxonMobil that there would be 30 million to 50 million cubic feet of natural gas per day produced in association with the roughly 120,000 barrels per day of oil planned for the first phase of production at Liza.
The figure is smaller than the roughly 160 MMcfd that ExxonMobil officials have said could be produced at Liza but the supermajor said some of that will be used to run the floating production, storage and offloading vessels used at the field, while some volumes will be reinjected to increase oil recovery.
“That amount can provide if we choose to go in that direction, a 200-megawatt generation plant,” Minister Trotman said, according to the GINA report.
He said the gas could be used in power generation, as industrial feedstock or to revive a shuttered aluminium production plant. “These are decisions that have to be made including the decision as to where we wish to land the gas if there is going to be a pipeline along the coast whether from Georgetown right up to Crab Island,” Trotman said in the GINA report.
Liza, which is operated by ExxonMobil in partnership with Hess and CNOOC subsidiary Nexen, is thought to hold upwards of 1.4 billion barrels of oil. Analysts at consultancy WoodMackenzie estimated that Liza, along with smaller discoveries at the Payara and Snoek prospects could hold as much as 3 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Source: Upstream
