Canje Block outcome no damper on Guyana’s wider oil prospects - Rystad Energy view

Some of the earliest reports on Guyana’s oil & gas discovery and recovery pursuits this year focussed on Westmount Energy, an investor in the Canje Block. These reports revealed that a disappointment had materialised in the Block as the first completed well, Bulletwood-1, while encountering quality reservoirs, failed to yield commercial quantities. Bulletwood-1 was reportedly targeting more than 500 million barrels of oil in what was envisaged as a prospect similar to Liza 1 in the Stabroek Block.

The reported disappointment over the outcome of the Canje Block probe however, appears to have done little to alter the broader upbeat perspective of Norway’s Rystad Energy, one of the more respected energy analysts globally.

Rather, the company continues to spew an upbeat assessment of

Guyana’s longer term oil prospects. Indeed, it says in a recent pronouncement that it expects exploration activity offshore Guyana to rebound quickly from the Canje Block disappointment.

A March 19 Caribbean Business News roundup quotes “a new report published recently by Rystad” as saying that close to 300 million barrels of oil equivalent have been discovered on average for each exploration well drilled in Guyana over the past six years. The Caribbean Business News report quotes Rystad analyst Santosh Kumar as saying that “with around 16 exploration wells planned, including some in riskier frontier regions, 2021 holds a lot of promise,” for Guyana.

ExxonMobil itself appeared to be brimming with optimism about its Guyana prospects, going forward, with the company’s Senior Vice President of Upstream Operations

Neil Chapman reportedly saying to investors recently that the 9 billion barrels equivalent of oil discovered offshore Guyana up until now was only the tip of the iceberg.

Oil & gas industry reports indicate that, going forward, Exxon is expected to prioritise what it considers to be high-value assets where it has been determined that there are ‘deeper plays’ underneath the existing discoveries. The focus on what Guyana’s offshore prospects have to offer coincides with what another media report describes as the “offloading of mature assets in Asia, Europe and Africa” and the attendant prioritising of investments “in high-value assets such as Stabroek.”

The company projects that ExxonMobil’s fleet of contracted drill ships assigned to its Guyana operations will increase to six with the arrival of the Noble Sam Croft in April.