Jobs, Rib-Eyes and Worries: How Exxon’s Giant Oil Discovery Is Transforming Guyana

livemint.com:

GEORGETOWN, Guyana—New supermarkets here are stocked with prime Texas rib-eyes. A recently opened waterfront hotel offers executive suites for $750 per night. The national cricket team, the Amazon Warriors, is getting a new stadium that begins construction next spring.

Money is pouring into Guyana, which is quickly being transformed from one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere into the world’s fastest-growing economy, according to the International Monetary Fund. The economic makeover is succinctly explained by the sponsor named on the cricket team’s jersey: Exxon Mobil, the oil giant based almost 3,000 miles to the north. Guyana is suddenly the world’s next great energy powerhouse.

Through a series of discoveries starting in 2015, Exxon and its two partners, Hess and Chinese oil company Cnooc, have found more than 11 billion barrels of oil off the Guyanese coast—a bounty that could last for decades. Some oil executives say they’ve never seen a success of that scale in their careers and won’t again see one like it. Flights to Georgetown now teem with foreign oil-field workers looking to capitalize on the find.

Last week, rival Chevron bought into the bonanza, agreeing to pay $53 billion in stock to buy Hess, primarily to acquire Hess’s nearly one-third stake in the Guyana project. “It’s really unique in the world," Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said in an interview. “The largest discovery in the last decade, a high-quality resource…and it’s just got unmatched growth potential." Since 2017, government revenue in Guyana has tripled, as has the size of its economy, according to the IMF.