Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat has announced that two additional Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) are expected to be signed before the end of the year.

He made the disclosure on the sidelines of a signing ceremony at the Pegasus Suites on Tuesday, where an international consortium led by TotalEnergies, signed a Production Sharing Agreement with the Government for a shallow-water oil block offshore Guyana.

The consortium was among companies awarded oil blocks offshore Guyana under the 2022 Licensing Round. The two additional PSAs will be signed based on the other offshore blocks awarded under the same Licensing Round.

“We are working to have at least two more signing before the year is out. So, we have really advanced the negotiation with those two other awardees, and we are hoping that before the ending of 2025 that we can those agreements signed with those companies,” Minister Bharrat told News Source.

Guyanese owned company, Sispro Inc.; International Group Investment Inc. and Montego Energy; Liberty Petroleum Corporation and Cybele Energy; ExxonMobil, Hess and CNOOC; and Delcorp Inc, Watad Energy and Arabian Drillers are the other companies that were awarded the offshore oil blocks.

Minister Bharrat, while not disclosing the names of the other companies preparing to sign the PSA, confirmed that Sispro is one of the companies expected to sign before the end of the year. However, he noted that negotiations are ongoing.

“It is our hope that we can sign at least two more before the year is out. The team is working feverishly to ensure that we can close of those agreements but most of the time it also depends on the ability of those awardees from the bid round to secure, one, their signing bonus, which must be paid on the signing and the ability to execute the work programme as well. So, once we are satisfied that these companies can do that then we will move ahead with the signing,” Minister Bharrat explained.

He said the new model PSAs for the Shallow and Deep Water Blocks have been finalized, and would be the standard agreements to be signed across the board all companies.

“Yes, we have said that, and that is what took sometime too so that we can have a model standard PSA – one for shallow blocks, one for deep blocks – which is on our website, it is public, and yes, that is the model PSA that will be used for every other company that signs on to a block in Guyana. There were no changes to the fiscal arrangement, it is 10% corporate tax, 10% royalties, 65% cost recovery and 50-50 sharing of profits,” Minister Bharrat said.

However, while there were no changes to the fiscal terms in the model PSA, Minister Bharrat admitted that there were changes to the non-fiscal terms.

U.S oil giant ExxonMobil and its partners had expressed concerns about the non-fiscal terms. According to him, the changes were minor.

“There were some expressions of concerns with regards to the non-fiscal terms, some of which we could have worked through with but with regards to the work programme, the fiscal arrangements, the environmental conditions, those were the ones that we were not willing to change or to amend in anyway,” the Natural Resources Minister explained.

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