Fresh from major oil finds in the offshore Stabroek Block, ExxonMobil yesterday began a new round of exploration at the Kaieteur Block it shares with partner, Ratio Oil Exploration of Israel.
In an advertisement in yesterday’s edition of Stabroek News, the Maritime Administration Department (MARAD) issued a notice to mariners that as at April 30th, 2017, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL) would have commenced a six-month period of seismic work. Esso explores on behalf of ExxonMobil.
The operation will incorporate the use of the R/V Polarcus Adira, M/V Groen 7-Oceans and the M/V Vroon Vos Athos, according to MARAD and will cover an area of about 5,750 square kilometers, some 118 miles from the coast of Guyana.
In late July of 2016, Ratio had announced, in it its home country, the overseas partnership with ExxonMobil.
“Just a week after announcing plans to launch an overseas energy-exploration company, Ratio said … half of the rights in a Guyana license that will be controlled by the new company it is forming were sold to the U.S. energy giant ExxonMobil,” Israel’s Haaretz News had stated.
“The Rotlevy and Landau families, who control Ratio, transferred half their 50% stake in the Block B licence to Esso Exploration & Production Guyana. Block B is one of the foreign energy-exploration assets the families plan to turn over to the newly formed company called Ratio Overseas, which will hold rights to explore for oil in Malta, Ireland and the Philippines as well as Guyana and list its shares on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. ExxonMobil will now become the operating partner for the license,” it added.
Around the same time, at the end of its July 2016 quarterly earnings call with analysts, ExxonMobil’s Vice President, Investor Relations and Secretary, Jeffrey J. Woodbury, had reported that the company had recently entered into an agreement with the Ratio Companies.
Woodbury had informed that the partnership would see ExxonMobil acquiring a 50% interest in the Kaieteur Block, offshore Guyana, and would become the operator. The deal would see the American oil firm ExxonMobil acquiring more acreage offshore Guyana.
“Pending government approval, this deal will bring our total acreage position in Guyana to 11.4 million acres over the three blocks,” he had said.
Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman told Stabroek News yesterday that government had given approval to the process he termed “farming in”, which he said was quite common in the industry.
In terms of proximity, the Kaieteur block is approximately 250 kilometers offshore Guyana in ultra-deepwater north and adjacent to the Stabroek and Canje blocks.
This newspaper understands that the operations will be just east of the Anadarko Roraima Block location and seaward of ExxonMobil’s Stabroek Block, just slightly west of where the Liza Discovery is.
In 2013, Anadarko had been engaged in extensive work prior to drilling in Guyana’s western waters when a research vessel doing studies on its behalf was seized by the Venezuelan navy. Although the U.S Petroleum Company visited the country back in 2015 and said that it still had interest in drilling, its works have halted here.
Other companies such as Repsol Exploration, Tullow Oil and CGX also own blocks offshore.
Only last month, ExxonMobil officially announced the recent discovery of oil deposits at its Snoek well, in the Stabroek Block.
