Published by Uma Rajagopal
Posted on December 3, 2024
2 min readLast updated: January 28, 2026
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HOUSTON (Reuters) – U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil and partners are continuing to negotiate with Guyana’s government on the terms for developing a shallow-water oil block, an Exxon spokesperson said on Monday.
HOUSTON (Reuters) – U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil and partners are continuing to negotiate with Guyana’s government on the terms for developing a shallow-water oil block, an Exxon spokesperson said on Monday.
Exxon, Hess and CNOOC won offshore block S8 in a bidding round launched in late 2022 by President Irfaan Ali’s administration.
The group remains interested in the block and talks are continuing, an Exxon Mobil spokesperson said via email. The spokesperson declined to disclose whether it aimed to use the block for carbon capture and storage, or for oil and gas exploration.
The South American country’s vice president had said last month that the group had withdrawn from the auction after the government was uninterested in a carbon sequestration project. But on Thursday, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said Exxon had since written to the government on interest in the block.
“They said there might have been a misunderstanding, they have not walked away from” negotiations, Jagdeo said in response to a request for additional auction details at his weekly briefing. “Let’s see how it goes.”
Eight of the 14 oil and gas blocks Guyana offered in the round received bids, including by large oil firms Petronas, CNOOC and TotalEnergies. Jagdeo said he expected an agreement with TotalEnergies in the near future.
(Reporting by Kemol King in Georgetown and Gary McWilliams in Houston; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
An oil block is a designated area of land or sea where oil exploration and extraction activities are permitted. Companies bid for rights to explore and develop these blocks to find and produce oil and gas resources.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology that captures carbon dioxide emissions from sources like power plants and stores it underground to prevent it from entering the atmosphere, helping to mitigate climate change.
An auction in oil exploration is a competitive bidding process where companies submit proposals to acquire rights to explore and develop oil blocks. The highest bidder typically wins the rights to the block.
A spokesperson is an individual authorized to speak on behalf of an organization, providing information and addressing inquiries from the media or the public, often regarding company actions or policies.
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