This year’s June 4-7 fourth Suriname Energy, Oil & Gas Summit (SEOGS) concludes today(June 7), on a decidedly higher note than its predecessors. The event, hosted by the country’s state-run oil company Staatsolie, at Paramaribo’s Royal Torarica Hotel & Resort was held against a much more upbeat backdrop than its predecessors, the country now on the threshold of moving forward with its first offshore oil development, reportedly a US$9 billion pursuit, being undertaken by the French Company, Total Energies, which operates the country’s Block 58.
ExxonMobil Corporation, XOM, and Production Suriname, an affiliate of ExxonMobil, alongside Petronas Suriname E&P, a subsidiary of Malaysia’s Petronas, have announced a significant hydrocarbon discovery in Block 52 offshore Suriname. This marks the third major find in the block since 2020, further confirming the potential of the Suriname-Guyana basin for substantial oil and gas reserves.
Guyana will now have to share the regional and international petro limelight with its neighbour in an environment that is likely to bring significant investment-related attention to the two south American countries, going forward, whereas, not many moons ago, the two were both, in terms of the state of their economies, numbered among the region’s basket cases. Overnight, SEOGAS has become the biggest energy and offshore event in the region, occupying some of the space on the global monitor which, not many moons ago, had been filled entirely by Guyana.
As if to celebrate Suriname’s now definitive breakthrough in the oil and gas sector, SEOGAS, this year, pumped more resources into expanding the forum in Paramaribo to facilitate a four-day executive summit, a two-day Workshop and Roundtable Programme, a Women’s Economic Empowerment Programme, a Youth Empowerment Programme and Fora designed to facilitate opportunities through which the local business community can develop partnerships with external partners. Now engrossed in the planning stages for oil recovery by Total Energies, Suriname, simultaneously, is likely to be monitoring the further discoveries in Block 52. There is as yet, no meaningful estimate as to the likely volumes of the overall discoveries.
It will be recalled that four years ago, in the height of the kickoff of oil recovery pursuits by ExxonMobil, offshore Guyana, Presidents’ Irfaan Ali and Suriname’s Chan Santoki, visited each other to engage in what, for the most part, were discourses regarding the prospects for bilateral cooperation that could derive from the petro-driven opportunities arising out of both countries becoming world class oil producers. Up to this time, only 32 million acres, an estimated 40% of Suriname’s offshore oil blocks have been licensed leaving 60% untouched and ripe with potential.
