Exxon seeks African ‘elephant’

● Exxon Mobil is targeting Southern and

West Africa.

The world’s big oil explorer is scouring the globe for the next big find after its success in Guyana.

Exxon “really loaded” its exploration portfolio recently by buying large positions in Ghana, Mauritania, SA and Namibia, and also Cyprus and Malaysia, as rivals pulled back, said Stephen Greenlee, Exxon’s president of exploration.

Exxon’s buying spree targeted drilling concessions and seismic surveys, which are maps of the rock beneath the seabed that can indicate probable crude oil deposits. Bigger finds tend to generate bigger profits, and the ultimate prize is known in the industry as an elephant: a discovery that holds a billion barrels or more.

“We’re acquiring large amounts of seismic data with the idea that in the future one or two of those are going to turn out to be the next Guyana,” Greenlee said. “These are large acreage positions and they’re in areas that we think have promising opportunities for hydrocarbon systems.”

Greenlee led the team that discovered the huge tranche of crude off Guyana’s coast in 2015. It has grown into the world’s biggest new deep-water find. At 4-billion barrels, it dwarfs the reserves of Opec cartel members Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

Exxon pioneered deep-sea discoveries off Nigeria and Angola, and opened landlocked Chad to drilling. While Ghana has yielded a major find known as Jubilee, the other African countries in Exxon’s sights have little experience of deep-water oil and natural gas production. Rivals such as Tullow Oil, Royal Dutch Shell and Total SA are also on the hunt along Africa’s western coastline.

Exxon intends to drill “an important well” in Cyprus this year in addition to working on its more established exploration areas in Guyana and Brazil, Greenlee said.

In Brazil, a lot of data has already been collected on the exploration blocks, meaning that the company has greater certainty about what’s below the ground.

“As opposed to pure frontier exploration, these are well-defined large prospects,” Greenlee said.

As such, Exxon has a better idea of what to expect and has named Brazil one of its five top projects for the next decade alongside Guyana, US shale, and liquefied natural gas in Mozambique and Papua New Guinea. Brazil’s “accretive value” ranks similar to the Permian shale basin of west Texas and New Mexico, Greenlee said.