ExxonMobil committed to addressing barriers to local supply chain participation – Routledge

Despite ongoing challenges such as limited workforce capacity and access to finance, local companies that form strategic partnerships, particularly with international firms, are playing a vital role in strengthening local supply chains.
These collaborations are enabling businesses to seize emerging opportunities across the country’s growing economy, especially in the expanding oil and gas sector.
This point was emphasised by President of ExxonMobil Guyana Alistair Routledge during a press conference on Monday, where he disclosed that since 2015, GY$600 billion has been expended among local suppliers in the oil and gas industry.
Guyana’s local content legislation, enacted in 2021, aims to boost local businesses and citizens by mandating that oil and gas companies procure a percentage of goods and services from Guyanese nationals and companies. The law defines 40 sub-sectors, including transportation, legal services, and marketing, where local content is prioritised, and establishes a Local Content Secretariat to ensure compliance and provide certification.
According to the oil executive, Guyanese firms engaged in smart partnerships are driving the local supply chains.
“It’s very dynamic, the supply chain side, whether you’re in the catering side or some of the more technical aspects,” he said, noting that “what we’re seeing is local companies also partnering with international companies to bring additional expertise, sometimes some additional human capacity. And those smart partnerships can be very effective. What it means is we’re now doing more and more procurement requests for information to understand earlier in the process…what new capabilities are being developed in the country so that then we can make those available to local suppliers.”
For instance, he highlighted the increase in the amount of fabrication work now being done in the country.
“One of the great examples of that is that just a couple of weeks ago, we were at the Vreed-en-Hoop Shorebase, where Saipem has the second of the two yards where they are doing fabrication in-country of equipment such as the subsea jumpers that connect wellheads to flowlines…now at the Vreed-en-Hoop Shorebase, they’ve also started fabricating and assembling the very first ‘pipeline and flowline end terminations’, which are being installed on the seabed,” Routledge outlined, noting that this is just another milestone in Guyana for building local content and bringing more of the supply chain into the country.
As good as the numbers are, however, Routledge emphasised that “we should never be complacent, and we will continue to push forward on a number of fronts to ensure that there are yet more opportunities for Guyanese businesses and people to be employed in the industry.”
The ExxonMobil President acknowledged the challenges local companies face in meeting required standards to fully benefit from supply chain opportunities and reaffirmed the oil giant’s commitment to working with the Government to help address these gaps.
“I think specifically for Guyana, there is a workforce capacity challenge. Given the growth that’s happening across the country, capacity and skills availability in the country, that we’re working with our prime suppliers, we’re working with the Government, working with the education institutions in the country to help to build the capacity to train, to educate so that we can accelerate those opportunities and help people in the country to get better, higher-paid opportunities in the country. So that is the first challenge; it is just the capacity and capability in the workforce,” he noted.
He also recognised that the oil and gas sector is also competing with other growing industries.
“We’ve seen all the gold price increasing; the mining sector is seeing a lot of investment. Obviously, tourism is growing, a lot of new hotels. So, there are other parts of the economy that are growing as well. And so, we’re all now competing for that limited human capacity.”
Routledge also recognised access to finance challenges among local companies.
“The ability for companies to grow requires not just human resource, but financial resource, capital to invest in equipment, buildings, warehousing, those kinds of things…and that access to capital isn’t always easy, and it’s often very expensive here in Guyana,” he acknowledged.
“So, we’ve been working with, again, the Government, with the Minister of Finance, with the banking sector to see what are some of the things that we as an industry can do. But some of these challenges exist, you know, more broadly for the whole economy,” Routledge said.
For the first half of 2025, ExxonMobil and its contractors spent about GY$87 billion among 1700 local suppliers, Routledge noted.
He added that about 70 per cent of the workforce of ExxonMobil and its contractors are Guyanese.
The Guyana Technical Training College Inc, commonly called the Oil and Gas Institute, which is situated in Port Mourant, Berbice, will play a significant role in building capacity among Guyanese to work in the oil and gas industry, Routledge recognised.
Last October, the first batch of students graduated from the college, and according to the institution’s director, Professor Clement Sankat, all 24 are currently employed on the various Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels offshore Guyana. Initially, students had to go to Canada for part of their training.