U.S. offshore vessel owner Edison Chouest will employ more Guyanese workers aboard its vessels supporting ExxonMobil’s drilling operations in the Stabroek block, offshore Guyana.
According to the Guyanese Department of Public information (DPI) Edison Chouest Offshore will soon open its local company ‘G Boats’ in Georgetown.
Business Development Manager of Edison Chouest, Daniel LaFont spoke to DPI on the sidelines of the El Dorado Offshore training session for Guyanese mariners last week where 40 seamen were being instructed in occupational safety for jobs in the offshore oil and gas industry.
“We are going to have Guyanese that will be working and manning our office, including one that is responsible for health and safety. The persons we will hire here will not only be trained here, but we will go back to the facilities in Louisiana to get hands-on training of what we do here,” LaFont said, as reported by DPI.
According to DPI, Edison Chouest already employs 53 Guyanese workers aboard nine vessels supporting Exxon. The DPI did not say how many Guyanese could expect to be deployed by Edison or when.
ExxonMobil has in the past few years put Guyana on the oil industry map with a series of world-class discoveries.
The company has recently has boosted its estimate of recoverable oil in its offshore Guyana block to 4 billion oil-equivalent barrels , up from the previous estimate of 3.2 billion oil-equivalent barrels.
As previously reported, Guyana’s first development, Liza Phase 1 , will use a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel to produce 120,000 barrels of oil per day, starting by early 2020.
The collective discoveries on the Stabroek Block to date have established the potential for up to five FPSOs producing over 750,000 barrels per day by 2025.