Joint ventures aiding growth of local businesses 

Local businesses have been forming joint ventures with overseas companies in an effort to invest and build lasting partnerships in the petroleum sector.

They navigated opportunities and challenges during a panel discussion, titled, “Consortia and Joint Ventures– Navigating the Complexities,” during the Local Content Summit which was hosted at the Marriott Hotel in Georgetown on Tuesday.

Speaking at the event, Partner at Jack A. Alli Sons and Company, Khalil Ali noted that since the Local Content legislation came into existence in 2021, there has been an active drive to increase participation of Guyanese companies in the petroleum and its supply chain sector.

“The vehicle… to actually materialise that increased presence has been joint ventures. So, we have quite a lot of joint ventures that are now being established in Guyana, where we have partners from outside of Guyana and in Guyana, which I suppose you would naturally expect the framework to look like. Maybe a more experienced operator coming in and partnering with the local company or international to provide service in a particular field. What we’ve also seen developed in the last three years is joint ventures between or among local operators to increase their authority and service for the sector and others. So you have a variant of joint ventures now appearing on the public landscape, and we have both present here today in the panel,” he said.

Alisa Bishop of AEGIS Security shared that the company entered into a joint venture with Suregig Inc. with a vision was to create a modern, locally driven security firm which offers end to end operations and manpower.

“AEGIS blends local talent with international excellence, and we are proud to launch the security firm and be a part of local content as well, because that’s all we are. We’re fully committed to local content. We operate within the compliance of Guyana as well as the security standards,” she boasted.

Additionally, Dr Surendra Persaud of Caribbean Surgeries said while the company has been in business for 19 years, it recently aligned with the oil and gas industry, and soon realised the need for joint ventures.

“So, normally what happens is an RFI is released and then an RFP. And so when ExxonMobil released its two RFPs- one for medical services which was eventually at their clinic and another which required international medivacs and emergency services, it was clear that there was a segment of that contract which we as a Guyanese company here could not meet. And the way it was actually written they appreciated us and they sort of guided us, that you need to find an international partner. If I need to send a patient back to the US, I don’t have the ability to get them accepted into a hospital and I certainly don’t have the connections to get them a plane to medivac them there. And so you now search for partners… and so I [got involved in] a very specific and targeted joint venture with a company called Extreme MD that works with Exxon Mobil in other parts of the world…that’s one less hurdle that you have to overcome,” he shared.

The summit supports Guyana’s Local Content Legislation by connecting stakeholders to explore opportunities in oil and gas.