Luiz Hayum, a principal analyst with Wood Mackenzie’s Latin America upstream research team, sees Guyana’s oil bounty raking in huge sums for the ExxonMobil-led consortium and the government.
“Our valuation for Stabroek’s ten-FPSO development is over US$150 billion at US$65/barrel Brent prices split between the government and the three block partners,” Hayum said in a May 17 WoodMac release.
ExxonMobil has discovered 11 billion oil-equivalent barrels at the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana, including approximately 17 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The company has said it may need as many as 10 floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels to develop the discovered volumes. The government has endorsed this plan.
So far, in partnership with Hess and CNOOC, ExxonMobil has sanctioned six projects – Liza 1 and 2, Payara, Yellowtail, Uaru and Whiptail. The first three produced 613,000 barrels per day (b/d) of oil in the first quarter of 2024. Yellowtail, Uaru and Whiptail are expected to start production in 2025, 2026 and 2027, and will add approximately 750,000 b/d. ExxonMobil expects its Guyana production to hit 1.3 million b/d by 2027. However, the company’s optimization program could take production closer to 1.5 million b/d.
The Stabroek Block consortium is working with the government on Gas-to-Energy, a project to utilize natural gas from the Liza field primarily for domestic power generation.
The first offshore gas development is still in contemplation. The government has encouraged Exxon to prioritize gas after the company lined up six oil projects. Exxon has said it sees gas as a priority in keeping with the government’s view. Its drilling plans for 2024 include appraisal of the Haimara gas field discovered in 2019 near the Suriname border. Appraisal of the Lau Lau discovery announced in January 2022 is also on the cards, estimated by Westwood Group as majority gas. While the seventh Stabroek Block project could be gas, Exxon indicated up to February that it has not decided yet.
ExxonMobil operates the Stabroek Block with a 45% stake, while Hess owns 30% and CNOOC owns 25%.
