The Guyanese Government says it intends to implement later this year, an oil and gas data repository that will enable the country to consolidate all historical and current petroleum data in a centralised local facility. At present, Guyana’s data is stored in Houston, Texas. Companies seeking additional information related to Guyana’s oil prospects must make a special request to access this overseas facility.
Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat described the initiative as an ambitious project aimed at fostering job creation and revenue generation by keeping data within the country. “Many countries producing oil don’t have a data repository in their own country after four or five years. After four years we are already moving towards establishing our own data repository in the country,” he said.
“It’s a very lucrative investment or assignment that we’re taking on because it’s not only spending money to set up the data repository. It is about getting our people to work there and to sell that data to companies that will come and seek to do exploration in Guyana. It’s worth a lot of money, Bharrat added. He noted that in the previous bid round, companies were required to pay a two million US dollar fee for data access. While acknowledging that Guyana received a portion of this revenue, he said that holding the repository in-house would be significantly more profitable.
Source: caribbean.loopnews.com