Guyana govt: Global environment hampering oil and rice prices

The Guyana gov­ern­ment says the glob­al en­vi­ron­ment is im­pact­ing the rev­enue of the oil and rice in­dus­tries, but re­main con­fi­dent that the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic pro­jec­tions would be met.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dr. Ash­ni Singh, dur­ing the first sit­ting of the Par­lia­ment fol­low­ing the Sep­tem­ber 1 re­gion­al and gen­er­al elec­tion, tabled the mid-year eco­nom­ic re­port show­ing that the in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment was hav­ing an ef­fect on the in­dus­tries.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the coun­try’s oil rev­enues bare­ly in­creased dur­ing the first half of this year due to a re­duc­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al oil prices, even as the sec­tor is pro­ject­ed to grow this year with the start of pro­duc­tion by the float­ing pro­duc­tion stor­age and of­fload­ing (FP­SO) ves­sel at Yel­low­tail in the Stabroek Block.

“Crude oil prices are an­tic­i­pat­ed to come in at 15.7 per cent be­low the 2024 lev­el, to av­er­age US$68 per bar­rel in 2025, low­er than the US$71.9 per bar­rel pro­ject­ed at the time of prepar­ing Bud­get 2025,” ac­cord­ing to the mid-year re­port.

The ac­tu­al Brent crude fu­tures on Mon­day rose 12 cents to US$64.89 per bar­rel. Mor­gan Stan­ley raised its Brent crude fore­cast for the first half of 2026 to US$60 a bar­rel from US$57.50, cit­ing the de­ci­sion by OPEC+ to pause quo­ta hikes in the first quar­ter of next year and re­cent­ly on Russ­ian oil as­sets.

The mid-year re­port notes that in ad­di­tion to the over­all pro­ject­ed 15.6 per cent growth in the oil sec­tor due to ear­li­er-than-an­tic­i­pat­ed pro­duc­tion at Yel­low­tail, out­put would re­sult in Guyana pro­ject­ing to in­crease the num­ber of lifts of prof­it oil from 31 to 33.

As a re­sult of that, Guyana’s pe­tro­le­um de­posits for the year are now pro­ject­ed to to­tal US$2,512.4 mil­lion, on­ly mar­gin­al­ly high­er than the US$2,503 mil­lion pro­ject­ed at the time of prepar­ing the 2025 Na­tion­al Bud­get, “on ac­count of low­er crude oil prices”.

In terms of the Nat­ur­al Re­sources Fund (NRF), the mid-year re­port states that US$2,463.9 mil­lion is ex­pect­ed to be with­drawn from the fund this year and as a re­sult, the NRF clos­ing bal­ance is es­ti­mat­ed to stand at US$3,248.8 mil­lion at the end of this year.

The mid-year re­port states that the oil and gas in­dus­try is es­ti­mat­ed to have ex­pand­ed by 5.5 per cent in the first half of 2025. Pro­duc­tion in the first six months of the year to­talled 115.7 mil­lion bar­rels, com­pared with 113.5 mil­lion bar­rels over the same pe­ri­od last year.

With the three pro­duc­ing projects in the Stabroek Block, the mid-year re­port states that the dai­ly pro­duc­tion av­er­aged near­ly 640,000 bar­rels per day (bpd) in the first half of this year, com­pared with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 624,000 bpd in the first half of last year.

It re­port fur­ther states that the mod­er­a­tion in the pro­duc­tion rate on the Des­tiny FP­SO from about 157,000 bpd last year, to 142,000 bpd this year, was off­set by in­creased pro­duc­tion rates on the Uni­ty and Pros­per­i­ty FP­SOs to 246,000 bpd and 252,000 bpd, re­spec­tive­ly.

With re­gards to the rice in­dus­try, the mid-year re­port notes that while ef­forts are con­tin­u­ing to se­cure mar­kets in Mex­i­co and Sau­di Ara­bia, the in­ter­na­tion­al price of the grain is ex­pect­ed to slump far be­low gov­ern­ment’s pro­jec­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, rice prices are al­so ex­pect­ed to de­cline, av­er­ag­ing US$406 per met­ric tonne this year, 31 per cent low­er year-on-year, and marked­ly low­er than the US$530 per met­ric tonne pro­ject­ed at the time of prepar­ing the 2025 Na­tion­al Bud­get.

At the same time, the mid-year eco­nom­ic re­port states that the pro­duc­tion tar­get for the full year re­mains 804,000 tonnes of rice equiv­a­lent, with a growth tar­get of 12.4 per cent, but­tressed by con­tin­ued sup­port to farm­ers and re­newed ef­forts to se­cure new and more at­trac­tive mar­kets.

The mid-year eco­nom­ic re­port al­so states that rice prices de­clined by 30.5 per cent dur­ing Jan­u­ary to June this year, av­er­ag­ing US$434.2 per met­ric tonne, on ac­count of grow­ing pro­duc­tion and un­locked in­ven­to­ries in ma­jor ex­port­ing coun­tries such as In­dia, with ad­di­tion­al down­ward pres­sure from a new har­vest in Viet­nam.

Ac­cord­ing to the mid-year re­port, the rice grow­ing in­dus­try is es­ti­mat­ed to have grown by 13.9 per cent in the first half of 2025.

It said that the Guyana Rice De­vel­op­ment Board (GRDB) re­port­ed pro­duc­tion of 410,194 tonnes of rice equiv­a­lent in the first six months of this year, com­pared with 362,030 tonnes in the first half of 2024.

On ac­count of favourable weath­er con­di­tions, the mid-year re­port says the yield achieved for the first crop of 2025 was 6.6 tonnes per hectare, align­ing with what was achieved in the first crop of last year.

The gov­ern­ment said it pro­vid­ed fer­tilis­er sup­port of two bil­lion Guyana dol­lars (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents)  to near­ly 5,300 farm­ers.

Pes­ti­cide sup­port was al­so pro­vid­ed to man­age the pad­dy for bug in­fes­ta­tion, ben­e­fit­ing over 2,352 farm­ers, at the end of June.

CMC/gt/ir/2025

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Nov 4, CMC –