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By Kiana Wilburg and Marianna Parraga
GEORGETOWN, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Guyana has received offers for eight of 14 offshore oil and gas blocks in a bidding round which closed on Wednesday, including from a consortium of Exxon Mobil, Hess Corp and China's CNOOC , the government said.
It did not said which other companies potentially made tenders, nor which companies bid for which blocks or for how many, but the Ministry of Natural Resources confirmed that Exxon, Hess and CNOOC had bid as a consortium.
Exxon and Hess did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Exxon already has productive oil projects in Guyana.
The South American country wants to quickly expand its oil industry and recruit a wider range of developers to counterbalance an Exxon-led consortium that controls all production.
Guyana is currently producing and exporting about 380,000 barrels per day (bpd) or equivalent of crude and gas, making it Latin America's seventh-largest producer. The Exxon consortium aims at reaching 1.2 million bpd of output by 2027.
A TotalEnergies spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment about whether the company had made any bids.
TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne arrived on Wednesday in neighboring Suriname to make an announcement on an offshore project in Surinamese waters adjacent to Exxon's Guyanaese Stabroek block. (Reporting by Kiana Wilburg in Georgetown and Marianna Parraga in Houston; Additional reporting by Sabrina Valle and Gary McWilliams in Houston, and Forrest Crellin in Paris; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by David Holmes)
