Guyana, the Caribbean Community’s leading oil and gas exporter, will soon be exporting more than a million barrels of oil daily when the country’s fifth offshore oil field is commissioned shortly, officials said this week.

The Errea Wittu, the floating production, storage, and offloading vessel that will support the Uaru oilfield is expected to arrive in Guyana this week after sailing from a shipyard in Singapore where most of the construction was done. The vessel will be able to store and cater for the additional 250,000 barrels daily that the new field will produce, adding to the 900,000 barrels which are being produced from the four others in operation since late 2019.

The one million figure will mean that Guyana will be the first in the 15-nation bloc to join the daily million barrel club and perhaps the latest among producers globally to do so when production begins in the last quarter of 2026. Other regional producers include Trinidad, Suriname, Barbados, and Belize.

Suriname, which shares the so-called golden offshore basin with Guyana, is expected to begin production in 2028, while Trinidad appears set for a revival of its dwindling supplies when supermajor ExxonMobil begins appraisal of ultradeep acreage in the coming months.

Speaking at a press briefing, President Irfaan Ali said the arrival of the floating vessel will “push national output above one million barrels a day for the first time."

"Our fifth production vessel set sail from Singapore in early August 2026 and is expected to arrive off Guyana’s coast this week, with first oil targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026,” he said.

He also said that Guyana’s share of oil and revenues with main operator ExxonMobil will be increasing exponentially in the coming weeks because Exon and partners Hess-Chevron and CNOOC of China have recovered their more than $50 billion investment since commercial quantities of oil were first discovered back in 2015.

As oil prices spike globally because of problems with the Strait of Hormuz and the war between the US and Iran, the pace at which the consortium’s investment has been recovered has been much faster than anticipated, so the sharing mechanism will be altered as a result.

“Guyana’s share of oil has increased from 12.5% to 39.8%," Ali told reporters. "This has occurred because the cost bank has been recovered two years earlier than originally expected. In terms of barrels, 75 of every 100 barrels produced went to cost recovery. Today, only about 20 barrels go to cost. The US$55 billion expenditure was paid off. The cost bank is not saturated or entirely depleted, but the 20 barrels today account for operating and other costs. That which is left, which is called the profit oil, is split evenly between Guyana and the companies. Guyana’s half is about 39.8 barrels out of every 100. The companies’ matching 39.8 barrels is split three ways between the co-venturers."

The consortium is also preparing to commission two additional oilfields by 2028 while preparations for even more are underway, officials said.