A drill ship deployed in the ocean. ExxonMobil said Monday it planned to deploy a fifth drillship to … [+]
As production gets started off the Guyanese coast, ExxonMobile on Monday upped its estimate of recoverable crude there to more than 8 billion barrels, up from about 6 billion, and announced a new discovery nearby.
The news marks ExxonMobil’s 16th deep water Guyanese discovery since it first struck oil there in May 2015. The finds have collectively made Guyana’s 6.6 million-acre Stabroek Block the largest crude discovery of recent years.
Proven potential still continues to grow.
The fresh 8 billion barrel estimate for Stabroek only includes 15 discoveries made through 2019, including two major discoveries made late last year at Tripletail and Mako wells.
The latest discovery, made earlier this month at the Uaru exploration well, comes just days after Guyana’s first-ever crude export and will be included in later estimates of total recoverable resources.
Uaru sits about ten miles northeast of the first producing project, the Liza field.
ExxonMobil expects about 750,000 daily barrels of production, more than the daily production of India, from the Stabroek Block by 2025. Credit Suisse in a recent bulletin said the figure “is very likely to be raised.”
“Guyana resource continues to get bigger,” the financial services company wrote. “Expect long-term plateau production target increases.”
ExxonMobil said in a news release that it hoped to start production on the new discovery by 2023, and that it planned to deploy a fifth drillship for exploration and appraisal of Guyanese resources.
The recent discoveries, all of valuable light crude, promise to plunge from underdevelopment to riches in just a few years, raising concerns for political and economic stability there. The International Monetary Fund has estimated 85.6 percent GDP growth in 2020 for the small nation of 785,000 people.
Guyana sits on the northeastern coast of South America between Venezuela and Suriname.
Other recent discoveries offshore neighboring Suriname have proven the existence of deep water resources beyond the Guyanese claim, suggesting even broader potential for development of the obscure region on South America’s northeastern coast.
Hess Corp., an exploration company and partner of ExxonMobil on the Stabroek Block, also celebrated the latest discovery. CEO John Hess said in a statement that the finds at Uaru, Tripletail and Mako “underpin a significant increase in estimated gross discovered recoverable resources for current and future developments.”
“We also continue to see multibillion barrels of additional exploration potential remaining,” he said.
