GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – ExxonMobil’s local affiliate, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL), and its partners Hess and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) have earned back money equivalent to the sum invested in the first project offshore Guyana.
Speaking with reporters earlier this week, the President of ExxonMobil, Guyana, Alistair Routledge, said the development cost for the Liza Phase One project, the first oil-producing area in the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana, was pegged at about US$3.7 billion.
An earlier estimate pegged the project cost at about US$4.4 billion. Oil production started here in December 2019.
Routledge said the sums equivalent to the initial investment had been recovered.
“It all goes into the same cost bank, but we have now recovered the cost that would be equivalent to the original investment for Liza Phase One, especially helped by the price environment last year,” he told reporters.
Because production is now ongoing at Liza Phase One and Phase Two, monies invested are being recovered from both projects.
Cost recovery is a part of the oil contract between the government and the investors.
Routledge noted that oil companies could only recover costs when they started producing oil. He added that even if a company spends millions of dollars searching for oil but is unsuccessful, they stand the costs alone.
But if they are successful, as in the Stabroek Block, they can recover the money they invested through the cost recovery mechanism.
As per Guyana’s 2016 oil contract, the investors can recover up to 75 percent of their costs when oil revenues are accumulated.
The remaining 25 percent of revenues are split equally between the companies and the government; the government also gets an additional two percent in royalties from total revenues.
Since EEPGL, Hess, and CNOOC are co-venturers in the Stabroek prolific block, they share the costs and profits based on their varying stakes in the projects.
Guyana is currently conducting a cost recovery audit of US$9 billion, representing three years of activities (2018 – 2020) by the investors in the Stabroek Block. Through this audit, Guyana can determine if Exxon owes the country.
Meanwhile, Routledge also said that the company would soon release its financial statements for 2022. That will detail the revenues accumulated and show how much was paid to the government and investors.
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