President Bharrat Jagdeo met with a delegation from London-based company Tullow Oil as it prepares to drill for oil offshore Guyana in April next year.
The company has invested huge sums in the Jaguar well and is pursuing the exploration through a joint venture with REPSOL, a leading international oil exploration company from Spain, a press release from the Government Information Agency (GINA) said.
Exploration Director of Tullow Oil Dr Angus McCoss and Manager of the Petroleum Division in the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission Newell Dennison met with Jagdeo on Monday.
Dr McCoss told GINA that he conveyed his company’s commitment to drill to the President. “It’s an exploration well, it’s a wildcat well, there’s a lot of geological risk… but we are willing to give it a shot, to invest in this well to try to find oil or gas for Guyana,” he said.
The company’s aggregate investment will be about US$60M which, according to Dr McCross, will fund the “risk of making a discovery through the Jaguar well.”
The Tullow/Repsol joint venture is the latest partnership interested in the search for oil offshore Guyana. Tullow Guyana has a 30% share in the Guyana Maritime Licence in Georgetown.
In September the company signed a new deepwater licence offshore Suriname. CGX Energy Incorporated, of Canada, has done a significant amount of work since being given the green light to start operations.
In January 2009 the company had announced that it had completed shooting of the 1,839 square kilometres 3D seismic survey on CGX’s 25% Georgetown Petroleum Prospecting Licence (PPL).