Chevron Corp. has stepped back from a proposed deep water port project in Guyana, declining to continue financial support inherited through its acquisition of Hess Corp., which previously backed preliminary engineering work for the development.
The decision emerged during an industry conference in Georgetown, where Harry Pastuszek, Guyana manager for Bechtel Group Inc., detailed the shift in corporate backing. Bechtel completed preliminary front-end engineering and design for the port in 2023 with funding from Hess under a notional agreement to maintain partnership with the government. Following the July 2025 acquisition, Chevron evaluated the initiative and elected to discontinue further investment.
“Chevron sort of sat down and said, ‘you’re doing what? Why would we? No, not going to do,'” Pastuszek told conference attendees. Chevron declined to comment on the matter.
Despite the withdrawal of private funding from Chevron, which secured a stake in ExxonMobil Holdings Corp.’s offshore Guyana operations through the Hess transaction, the port proposal continues to see movement through government and international channels. Guyana’s administration is championing the project—estimated to cost between $1 billion and $2 billion—to serve as logistical support for northern Brazil and anchor an industrial hub featuring data centers, fertilizer plants, and a potential refinery linked to domestic oil and gas production.
Bechtel is currently performing a feasibility study on behalf of the Guyanese government to evaluate opening northern Brazil access via an Atlantic port, updating an Inter-American Development Bank study from a decade ago. Meanwhile, Bruce Ellsworth, senior commercial officer at the U.S. Embassy in Guyana, announced that the U.S. Export-Import Bank has issued a letter of interest to finance a three-phase engineering design study following the feasibility assessment. Guyanese President Irfaan Ali has also indicated that Qatar has expressed interest in financing the actual construction of the deepwater facility.
Investment adviser CrossBoundary Group is executing the feasibility study to establish commercial viability. Jamie McInerney, CrossBoundary’s deputy head for Latin America and the Caribbean, noted that routing goods from Manaus and northern Brazil over a planned road from the Guyana-Brazil border to the new port could offer a shorter and more reliable trade corridor than southeastern Brazilian ports. CrossBoundary is compiling revenue, demand, and throughput data to determine whether the high-cost infrastructure project is bankable.
Local industry stakeholders have outlined specific operational parameters for the facility. Shipping executive David Fernandes argued that the port should feature a natural draft of 10 to 12 meters—surpassing Port Georgetown’s 9-meter limit—to accommodate Panamax vessels carrying up to 30,000 tons of cargo and position Guyana as a transshipment hub for northern Brazil. Another local shipping executive, Chandradat Chintamani, noted that a deep water port located in Berbice, eastern Guyana, would necessitate a dedicated 100-kilometer superhighway to transport cargo toward Georgetown.
The proposed site would additionally support logistics for offshore operations managed by ExxonMobil, which currently extracts approximately 900,000 barrels of oil daily off the coast of Guyana while awaiting government approval for its Longtail project, designed to yield 290,000 barrels of condensate and 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day.
