The Stena Carron drillship is on its way to Guyana where it is expected to drill several wells for US oil company ExxonMobil in the coming weeks.
Tracking services showed that the ship, owned by Stena Drilling, a UK company, departed the Canary Islands on Tuesday and is expected to arrive here later this month.
According to information on the company’s website, the Stena Carron is a Harsh Environment dynamically positioned DP Class 3 drillship capable of drilling in water depths up to 10,000 feet.
ExxonMobil executives met with President David Granger last week and the Ministry of the Presidency in a statement, had said the company reported that it will continue exploratory work in Guyana early next month. In May last year, ExxonMobil reported a “significant oil discovery” at its Liza-1 well offshore Guyana.
The oil-focused newspaper Upstream recently reported via its podcast ‘The Bit’ that ExxonMobil is likely to drill between four to six wells split between an appraisal of Liza as well as wildcats. Upstream’s Houston Bureau Chief Noah Brenner said the “Ranger” well, which is a prospect that Exxon had previously identified, is expected to be drilled and supposedly there are numerous lookalike structures to Liza that would be attractive.
He said if the company finds oil at “Ranger,” there is also likely to be an appraisal well for it, depending on how fast things move as well as the overall results. “Our sources have been telling us for quite some time that they had been looking to aggressively drill Guyana this year,” he said. It was noted that ExxonMobil hopes to begin oil production in 2018 and so is on a tight schedule.
ExxonMobil began oil and gas exploration in Guyana on March 5, 2015, drilling offshore in the Liza-1 well in the Stabroek Block. On May 20, the company announced that its exploration drill ship, the Deepwater Champion had made a significant oil find in the Block, about 120 nautical miles offshore Guyana.
At last week’s meeting with President of ExxonMobil Exploration Company, Stephen Greenlee and his team, Granger expressed government’s full support for ExxonMobil.
“Exxon continues to be optimistic and positive. It is too soon to make predictions. They are still in exploratory stages, but what I can say is, so far, the results have been very favourable,” the president was quoted as saying.
The Ministry of the Presidency had reported that Greenlee said with the expansion of the company’s operations in Guyana, it is necessary to provide an update to Granger. He added that the company is likely to have a growing presence in Guyana in the coming months and indicated that he is confident in their ability to bring value to the country.
“I wanted to talk to the president about our progress on the [Stabroek] Block as we have gone out and acquired seismic data and are preparing for a second drilling campaign. We wanted to share with the president, our commitment to the project. We also wanted to update him on our future activities both on the discovery that we made and future exploration. Finally, I wanted to talk to him about some of the work that is getting underway on our community programs and socio-economic development opportunities,” Greenlee was quoted as saying.
According to him, the company was especially happy with the discovery made in Guyana and as such it remains committed to advancing exploratory work here.
“Last year, we made a discovery offshore Guyana and it is very promising… so we want to follow up with data collection, to understand the size and the commerciality of the discovery. We want to acquire new data so that we can fully assess the potential of the Block offshore Guyana for the value that it will bring to Guyana and ExxonMobil in the future,” Greenlee said.
