If the prognosis provided by the United Kingdom oil company, United Oil Plc., currently engaged in oil search pursuits offshore Jamaica, turns out to be accurate, then the Caribbean could be on its way to significantly enhancing its profile as a global ‘petro power,’ a prospect that further raises hopes for the socio-economic standing of a region much of which is still regarded as impoverished or, at the very least, underdeveloped.
The likely reassessment of the region’s standing to global petro power lineup derives from the recent reported placing of a US$70 billion dollar estimate on the value of petroleum reserves “likely lying under Jamaica’s waters waiting to be tapped,” according to a report in the Thursday May 30th issue of the Jamaica Gleaner. “Were those numbers to be proved through further exploration and studies, the reserves would be comparable to the finds in Guyana,” the Gleaner quotes United Oil Plc. as saying, adding that the disclosure represents the company’s “latest pitch to prospective investors.”
United Oil Plc. holds a licence from the Jamaican government to explore for oil in the country’s Walton-Morant block, who has always been mindful of the risk involved in over-reaching itself in its pronouncements on the country’s petro prospects. However, the recent disclosure by United Oil Plc. could, in a relatively short time, lead to a further reassessment of the standing of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) as a global petro power. Guyana, it will be recalled, quickly became a household name in the international oil and gas community following the disclosure by ExxonMobil of the country’s first significant oil find.
At the time of the May 2015 Liza Discovery, ExxonMobil had announced that the search had encountered “more than 295 feet (90 meters) of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs,” having drilled to a depth of 17,825 feet (5,433 meters) in 5,719 feet (1,743 meters) of water. “Walton-Morant’s monetization potential is directly comparable to the development of the nearby 11 billion barrel Stabroek resource in Guyana,” the Gleaner report quotes United Oil Plc. as saying during “an investor presentation at the Jamaican High Commission in London.” The presentation was released on Friday, May 24.
United Oil’s Jamaica offshore oil hunt goes back to 2020 in a zone which, the Gleaner report says, stretches “south of Walton Basin in Westmoreland to Morant Bay in St Thomas, and spanning 22,400 kilometres.”
