Exploration drilling to pick up the pace

摘要

WITH oil prices quickly nearing $100 per barrel, operators are taking exploration risks to increase their reserves, and no region in the world is currently offering a higher payback than Guyana and Suriname. US supermajor ExxonMobil is spearheading activities offshore Guyana with an impressive track record on the Stabroek block, where more than 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent in recoverable resources have been encountered. "The Stabroek joint venture delivered three potentially commercial discoveries in 2021 at Whiptail, Pinktail and Cataback, and already in 2022 announced further discoveries at Lau Lau and Fangtooth," says Jamie Col-lard, senior analyst at UK-based advisory Westwood Global Energy Group. US independent Hess, which partners ExxonMobil on the Stabroek block, remains bullish on the upside of the prolific play and believes there are multibil-lion barrels of exploration potential yet to be unlocked. "In 2022, we plan to drill about 12 exploration and appraisal wells that will target a variety of prospects and play types," Hess chief operating officer Greg Hill said in a recent conference call. "These will include lower-risk wells near existing discoveries, higher-risk step-outs, and several penetrations that will test deeper Lower Campanian and Santonian intervals." Fangtooth-1, the first step-out well drilled in Stabroek to test the prospectivity of deeper horizons, encountered high quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs, potentially opening new development zones within Stabroek.