Suriname staging second Oil & Gas Summit this month
As Suriname continues to ‘shift gears’ in anticipation of the country’s widely anticipated commencement of the recovery of significant deposits of oil in the Guyana-Suriname Basin, the state-owned oil company, Staatsolie, has given notice of the staging of the country’s Second Energy, Oil and Gas Summit (SEOGOS) and Exhibition from June 28-30th.
Information published by the planners of the event indicate that it will feature a technical conference that will offer “access to a wealth of critical, timely and much needed information for the growth and development of Suriname’s energy sector and the benefit of the country,” a development which they says is occurring “at a time when technology, innovation and the global energy landscape is changing faster than ever.”
The event, according to published information, will be hosted “physically” in Paramaribo a sign that that the administration has set aside the tighter strictures associated with minimizing the spread of the coronavirus.
The 2nd edition of SEOGAS also provides the opportunity to hear from government on the pace of progress towards substantive oil recovery, meet the major operators, licence holders, tier one contractors, service companies “and the entire value chain in Suriname’s nascent hydrocarbons sector.” Statsoolie says that the summit also offers “a wealth of content for strategically minded companies looking to capitalize on investment, development, and project opportunities” in what it describes as “one of the world’s oil & gas hot spots.” The exhibition, the promotional material says, “provides the perfect platform for internationals to meet with local partners and for buyers to meet with suppliers.”
Guyana and Suriname burst into the global oil and gas spotlight almost a decade ago when discoveries of huge deposits of oil and natural gas in the basin shifted further attention to South America as an oil-producing region. The story of the Basin began with early modest exploration success offshore following by a lengthy period of exploration disappointment that eventually culminated in deep water success. Some of the “heavy hitters” in the global oil and gas industry including EXXON Mobil and Apache Corporation are at the forefront of the oil recovery pursuits in the Basin.
Statsoolie says that this year, the Suriname Energy, Oil & Gas Summit and Exhibition will feature a technical conference that will offer “access to a wealth of critical, timely and much needed information for the growth and development of
Suriname’s energy sector and the benefit of the country at a time when technology, innovation and the global energy landscape is changing faster than ever.”
With opportunities for economic advancement buttressed by foreign investment having opened up in both Guyana and Suriname on account of their respective oil discoveries, the two governments have embarked a high-profile bilateral cooperation initiative aimed at playing down the protracted dispute over control of the Corentyne river, seeking instead to explore such possibilities as might inhere in joint efforts to undertake initiatives through which they can take advantage of their oil wealth to build the economies of two countries, which, up until recently, had been widely seen and referred as two of the poorest countries in South America.
ExxonMobil, Shell ‘swallow’ huge $$ losses in Brazil oil exploration setback
The international oil companies ExxonMobil and Shell Plc. face what a May 16 Bloomberg report describes as “expensive offshore exploration setbacks” to their plans to turn Brazil into a major oil & gas profit centre.
Cumulatively, the two companies have reportedly recently sunk a total of US$3.6 billion into exploration wells offshore Brazil, but have, in each instance, come up with “non-commercial” wells. In the instance of Shell, a Bloomberg report says that over the past three years the company has drilled three exploration wells without finding any commercial volumes, the acquisition of the rights to the three blocks where the drilling occurred costing the company US$1 billion. In the instance of ExxonMobil, the three wells which the company has drilled in Brazil’s waters since late 2020 are also non-commercial, Bloomberg says.
The report points out that apart from the recent disappointing pursuits of Shell and ExxonMobil, Brazil has sold more than US$10 billion worth of exploration acreage to Petroleo Brasileiro SA, the country’s most dominant explorer but that the sales, up until now, have little to show in terms of returns.
Bloomberg reports that “the last knockout oil discovery in Brazil” was made by Petrobras more than a decade ago and that “the underwhelming results since then could indicate the biggest fields in the country’s so-called pre-salt region have already been found.”
Shell would appear to have fared no better in its recent pursuit of lucrative oil fields offshore Brazil with Bloomberg reporting that the company has suffered a string of failures similar to Exxon, and that “all the blocks acquired by Shell were unsuccessful” so far.
The Bloomberg report concludes that “for Brazil, it means that although oil production will double this decade from the fields it’s currently developing, output will then decline in the 2030s unless new reservoirs are identified for future exploitation.”
Back in March this year, ExxonMobil’s partner, Murphy Oil, reported that the company was pursuing drilling in a new area offshore of Brazil that could have as much as 1 billion barrels of oil and gas.