Energy Dept engages Education Ministry on oil and gas programmes

With Guyana set to sell its first million barrels of oil in just a few days and countless extractions yet to take place, the Energy Department has engaged the Education Ministry on tweaking the current curriculum to add facets of oil and gas.
During a recent radio interview, Director of the Department, Dr Mark Bynoe indicated that the aim is to slowly incorporate broad-based knowledge about the sector. Thereafter, students can opt to choose specialised courses or an expansive field such as civil engineering.
“We have been engaging with the Ministry of Education. In fact, we have started programmes in terms of looking at ways and elements by which the curriculum may be able to be tweaked. What we don’t want is necessarily to just pile on, to say that you have to have four, five [or] six different courses just in oil and gas,” Dr Bynoe insisted.
He later added, “What people need to be able to understand are the rudiments of oil and gas. Then you can determine if this is a sector that you want to get into or do you want to get into something that’s much broader.”
The Energy Director predicted that Guyana’s economic trajectory will require significant infrastructural development – in which young professionals will be able to benefit. This, he explained, is one of the ways in which broader fields will come into play.
Looking into the future, he foresees that Guyanese will be able to seek employment in their country without looking elsewhere for opportunities.
Since 2018, the Education Ministry has signalled the introduction of oil education in the school system. The syllabus was proposed for nursery, primary and secondary schools, up to the Grade Nine level.
Fast-forward to present day, ExxonMobil has announced its 16th discovery of recoverable resource. Northeast of the producing Liza field lies the Uaru exploration well, the company’s latest discovery on the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana.
It was revealed that the well encountered approximately 94 feet of high-quality, oil-bearing sandstone reservoir. Uaru, drilled in 6342 feet (1933 metres) of water, is located approximately 10 miles (16 kilometres) Northeast of the Liza field, which began producing in December 2019.