As top oil companies continue to invest in the Caribbean, Suriname and Guyana are the latest to benefit from oil and gas exploration.
Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas has spudded its first well – Sloanea-1 – offshore Suriname at Block 52 where it has farm-down 50% of its interest to US oil major ExxonMobil.
Block 52 is located north of the coast of Paramaribo, Suriname’s capital city, and is situated in the prospective Guyana-Suriname basin where several major hydrocarbon discoveries were made recently. It covers an area of 4,749 km² with water depths ranging from 50 to 1,100 meters.
According to Oil Now, Denmark-based drilling rig operator Maersk Drilling is carrying out the campaign using the semi-submersible Maersk Developer rig.
The contract is valued at approximately US$20.4 million including integrated drilling services, mobilization, and demobilization fees.
The Maersk Developer is a DSS-21 column-stabilized, dynamically positioned semi-submersible rig, able to operate in water depths up to 10,000ft.
Local logistics company RAMPS Logistics was contracted by Petronas to provide drilling support services for the Sloanea-1 campaign.
Meanwhile, ExxonMobil Guyana has made its final investment decision to proceed with the Payara field offshore development in Guyana after receiving government approvals.
Payara is the 3rd project in the Stabroek Block.
It is expected to produce up to 220,000 barrels of oil per day after startup in 2024, using the Prosperity floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel.
Ten drill centres are planned along with up to 41 wells, including 20 production and 21 injection wells.
According to a statement from ExxonMobil, the Guyanese workforce is expected to grow with the project development and investment.
Last week, bp Trinidad and Tobago LLC (bpTT) commenced work on the Matapal field development.According to a release from the company, Matapal will deliver gas into the Trinidad gas market from resources discovered by the Savannah exploration well drilled in 2017.
The development will have a production capacity of 400 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd).
The drilling operations for Matapal commenced last Thursday, and are being undertaken by the Maersk Discoverer, a semi-submersible rig which arrived in Trinidad on September 3.
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