Exxon Brings Yellowtail Facility Offshore Guyana into Production

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Written by Daniel Graeber for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Exxon Mobil Corporation (Spring, Texas) brought its latest production center to be located offshore Guyana online four months ahead of schedule. Total output from the Yellowtail prospect stands at 250,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOE/d).

With the startup of Yellowtail, Exxon said it's now churning out close to 1 million barrels per day (BBL/d) from offshore.

The company started construction on the floating production storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) One Guyana in December. It arrived offshore Guyana in early April. Boasting storage capacity of another 2 million barrels of oil, Exxon said it would market the crude oil delivered from Guyana as Golden Arrowhead, joining the queue of global benchmarks such as Brent and Dubai.

Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Oil & Gas Project and Plant databases can click here for a full list of detailed reports for Exxon's Guyana-based projects and click here for a full list of related plant profiles. By the end of the decade, Exxon believes its subsidiary in Guyana could be producing as much as 1.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day from eight offshore developments.

"ExxonMobil Guyana's deepwater developments are the most successful in the world," the company said in a press release. "In five years, the company has started up four complex offshore mega-projects under budget and ahead of schedule--while simultaneously advancing plans for four additional projects by the end of the decade."

Guyana is complex both in terms of geopolitics and business deals. Oil-rich Venezuela, which borders to the west, claims parts of Guyana as its own and bilateral tensions are high at times. Venezuelan forces marched on the Guyanese border last year.

Elsewhere, the $53 billion merger between Chevron Corporation (Houston, Texas) and Hess Corporation added another layer of complexity, given the recent attention to Guyana's oil wealth. The International Chamber of Commerce ruled in favor of Chevron in June, giving Exxon's rival access to the more than 1 billion barrels of discoverable oil-equivalent in the Stabroek formation offshore Guyana.

Neither Exxon nor Chevron spelled out country-specific data on Guyana in their second-quarter earnings releases. Hess in the first quarter, before the merger was completed, said 14 cargoes laden with crude oil left Guyanese shores, one less than during the fourth quarter. It was expecting 15 cargoes of crude oil to be sold from Guyana during the three-month period ending June 30.

Exxon said total second-quarter production reached 4.6 million BOE/d, its best performance in 25 years. With crude oil prices range-bound, and global trade tensions high, however, the company reported net earnings of $7.1 billion, down 23% year-on-year.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) platform helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking more than 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 trillion (USD).