(Kaieteur News) – ExxonMobil Guyana Limited (EMGL) in 2025 handed Guyana an $82B bill it said it racked up for oil production-related expenses.
The company’s financial statements for the year were shared with the media early in June during a press conference at its Ogle, East Coast Demerara (ECD) headquarters.
According to the company’s financials, production costs in 2025 jumped to a whopping $82,226,427,711 or approximately US$395M. Notably, the Government of Guyana (GoG) has set aside $60B to distribute the $100,000 cash grant to each adult Guyanese for 2026.
Exxon’s Business Services Manager and Vice President, John Colling said production expenses for 2025 increased due to the startup of a new Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel in the Stabroek Block.
“There’s a number of items that go into production costs. The key driver really was the startup of ‘One Guyana’ but there are some additional costs included in there such as research costs and future development,” Colling explained.
While Guyanese may welcome the startup of another project, the commissioning did not translate into more revenue for the country, but more expenses instead.
In 2024 Guyana’s profits and royalty in the Natural Resource Fund (NRF) was US$2.6B, while in 2025, the country merely received US$2.5B.
On the other hand, Exxon racked up a higher bill in 2025 when compared with 2024. The company’s total reported expense in 2025 was $498B, while in 2024 it said its operating expenditure was $478B.
It must be noted that all expenses incurred by the company related to the Stabroek Block is paid by Guyana through cost recovery. Each month, ExxonMobil takes up to 75% of the oil produced to pay for those expenses. The remaining 25% is split with Guyana as profits.
It is therefore extremely important that Guyana not only examines, but seek to verify the sum the country is saddled with.
To date, the country has done three audits of the company’s expenses for the period 1999 to 2023 but has not finalised or completed the process.
The first audit for the years 1999 to 2017 was conducted by a British Consultant, IHS-Markit which reviewed US$1.6B in pre-contract costs for ExxonMobil. The consultant advised Guyana that US$214M in costs were improper. Government is yet to ensure the disputed cost is added to the oil fund, with talks still ongoing with Exxon.
The second audit was done by a local consortium, VHE Consulting for the period 2018 to 2020. The group was tasked with auditing US$7.3B in costs that were billed to Guyana and found that just US$64.790M was wrongfully added to the cost bank.
They were later rehired for the third audit, this time to review a whopping US$19.6B spent by Exxon between 2021 and 2023. That report has been handed over to the government but the initial report has not been made public despite calls for transparency in the process.
Original link posted by Kaieteur News on July 01, 2026
