By Kemol King
Guyana’s offshore oil sector is experiencing yearly increases in the production rate.
Since First Oil at Liza 1 in December 2019, ExxonMobil and its partners have extracted more than 700 million barrels of crude from the Stabroek block. At the current production rate, the consortium expects to pump its billionth barrel by the end of the third quarter of 2026.
The pace reflects both the scale of the discoveries offshore Guyana and the rapidity with which ExxonMobil and its partners have brought new projects online. Production currently comes from four floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels: Liza 1, Liza 2, Payara, and Yellowtail.
The first three were in operation for the entire first eight months of 2025, while Yellowtail began producing on August 8. In the eight months alone, ExxonMobil Guyana extracted more than 150 million barrels.
With Yellowtail’s start-up, national production capacity jumped from roughly 660,000 barrels per day to more than 900,000 barrels per day. At this rate, the projects would be on track to extract more than 300 million barrels per year, even as ExxonMobil Guyana moves to add new projects.
Performance Across the Fleet
Each project has carved out a different performance trajectory.
- Liza 1 came on stream in December 2019 with a nameplate capacity of 120,000 barrels per day. Through debottlenecking and optimization, production increased to 160,000 barrels per day in 2024. However, production has begun to decline gradually. In 2025, the monthly averages were in the 140s from January to May, starting with 147,000 barrels per day in January, before decreasing into the 130s from June to August. Despite this, its year-to-date average of 140,000 barrels per day is still significantly higher than its original design capacity.
- Liza 2, designed to produce 220,000 barrels per day, has been optimized to sustain production of 270,000 barrels per day.
- Payara, launched with the same design as Liza 2, has reached a sustained rate of 265,000 barrels per day following optimization.
- Yellowtail, the newest addition, was built with a design capacity of 250,000 barrels per day and is expected to reach close to that rate in the final quarter of 2025 as it ramps up.
- In September, the four projects produced an average of 740,000 barrels per day.
Together, the four projects amount to a theoretical capacity of 945,000 barrels per day. But with the gradual decline at Liza 1, Exxon is expected to sustain output of just over 900,000 barrels per day by the end of 2025. The shortfall from full potential capacity is mainly due to the decline of Liza 1.
The Government of Guyana has already received more than USD7.5 billion in revenue from oil sales and royalties since 2019, and deposited the revenue into the Natural Resource Fund, which, by law, pools all petroleum revenues on behalf of the state. As production accelerates, the government anticipates a sharp rise in inflows to the Fund in the coming years.
ExxonMobil operates the Stabroek Block with a 45% stake. Its partners include Hess, recently acquired by Chevron, and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation. The consortium has been at the center of one of the world’s most remarkable oil development stories, moving discoveries to production in record time while scaling output at a pace rarely seen in the industry.
ExxonMobil has signalled that this is only the beginning. By 2030, the operator expects production from the block to reach 1.7 million barrels per day of oil and condensate more than double today’s levels. Gas will be increasingly featured in the portfolio; ExxonMobil will pipe associated gas from the Liza field to shore, transport some Hammerhead gas to shore, and anticipates future gas production from the Longtail development.
