Beatrice Mensah-Tayui to pay $17M for oil block in Guyana

Ghana’s Cybele Energy has become the first African oil and gas explorer to win an offshore block in Guyana, marking a symbolic breakthrough for African participation in one of the world’s hottest new crude provinces.

The Accra-based independent this week signed a production sharing agreement with the Guyanese government for shallow-water Block S7, a 1,016-square-kilometre tract about 50 kilometres offshore and along the same geological fairway as ExxonMobil’s giant Liza discoveries in the Stabroek block.

Cybele, led by president and founder Beatrice Mensah-Tayui, agreed to pay a signing bonus reported at $17 million and will enter a five-year exploration period split into two phases, according to government and industry statements. The company is targeting first drilling toward the end of 2026 after fresh seismic and geological work.

Technical assessments cited by the company and Guyanese authorities suggest Block S7 could hold up to 400 million barrels of recoverable oil, with a potential production plateau of roughly 160,000 barrels per day if discoveries move into full development.

The award is part of Guyana’s first competitive licensing round, launched in 2022 as the South American nation looks to widen participation beyond the Stabroek area now dominated by ExxonMobil and its partners. Block S7 sits outside contested maritime zones and benefits from existing 3D seismic coverage overlapping nearby discoveries such as Repsol’s Carapa-1 well.

Under Guyana’s updated fiscal terms, the contract carries a 10% royalty, a 10% corporate tax rate and a 50-50 profit-oil split between the state and the contractor. For shallow-water blocks like S7, the model also allows cost recovery of up to 65%, a feature seen as attractive for smaller independents taking on exploration risk.

In Africa, the deal is being cast as more than just another frontier licence. The African Energy Chamber and Ghanaian officials have hailed Cybele’s win as a milestone for African-controlled explorers, calling it the first time an Africa-based company has secured offshore acreage in Guyana and one of the earliest such moves by an African operator anywhere in South America or the Caribbean.

Mensah-Tayui has framed the project as both a business opportunity and a statement that African capital and technical talent can compete abroad in upstream oil and gas, even as producers at home face energy-transition pressures and tighter financing.

If Cybele’s exploration campaign delivers commercial finds, Guyana would add a non-major independent to a basin still dominated by supermajors, while Ghana would gain a new outward-looking champion in the global oil patch.