Phase 1 of Vreed-En-Hoop shorebase facility commissioned

The US$260 million Phase 1 of the Vreed-en-Hoop shore base facility at Plantation Best, West Bank Demerara was commissioned on Saturday.

The facility is located on an artificial island and was developed by VEHSI, a joint venture between NRG Holdings Inc., a 100% Guyanese-owned consortium of the Alphonso and Boyer families and Jan De Nul, a globally renowned maritime infrastructure company.

The facility will serve as a Subsea Umbilical, Flowlines, and Riser (SURF) shore base for ExxonMobil Guyana Limited.

Speaking during the Commissioning over the weekend, the President said the partnership between the local and international companies must be commended. He said the country’s trajectory, requires bold investments, and persons who are willing to take risks.

“There is a concept in business called early movers, and you have the early-movers advantage. If we remain static in our development and the way in which we structure our development, we will be late movers, and we’ll pay the price,” the President noted.

The company said during construction, over $60 million US dollars was invested in the deepening of the Demerara River channel. The channel has been widened from approximately 50 meters to 100 meters and it has also been extended from 18KM to over 28KM in length from the mouth of the river to provide access to larger vessels with deeper draught.

The facility is also expected to play an important role in the country’s Maritime sector.
It will also provide essential services related to the oil and gas sub-sea infrastructure such as equipment storage, inspections, repairs and fabrication.

In the initial stage, some 250 permanent jobs are expected to be created at the facility and the President said the facility will set the stage for more technical skills that are outside of Guyana to return.

“We are celebrating the policies and the initiatives that would enable us as a country to bring back more than 80% of the semi-technical and low-level technical jobs that were held outside of our country, will be here in Guyana because of policies, boldness in approach and because of the clear vision and because of confidence of the private sector,” the President stated.

Meanwhile, the President of ExxonMobil Guyana, Alistair Routledge said the facility will play an important role in Guyana’s development and said ExxonMobil and its partners stand to benefit from its construction.

“This shore base will bring various work scope here, to enable more fabrication of pipelines and flowlines, so that we can do more fabrication and build more capacity in the country and bringing those opportunities to the people here,” the ExxonMobil country manager stated.

The Shore base is the first of its kind in Guyana, and is the first stage of what is expected to be an expansive project at Vreed-en-Hoop to expand the country’s maritime sector.