PARAMARIBO, SURINAME – Combined oil production from the Guyana-Suriname Basin could overtake output from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico before 2032, according to S&P Global.
Speaking at the Suriname Energy, Oil and Gas Summit (SEOGS) 2026, Isaac Nuti, Principal Analyst at S&P Global Energy, said the firm’s production outlook shows the two regions heading in opposite directions, with Guyana and Suriname continuing to ramp up output while production in the U.S. Gulf gradually declines.
“The first thing you notice is they’re almost the exact opposite of each other,” Nuti said while presenting S&P’s production forecasts. “If you were to add them together, it’s almost like Guyana and Suriname offset this decline in production from the Gulf of Mexico.”
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Nuti said the crossover could occur even sooner than S&P currently forecasts. “We could actually see this change happen even faster, not because the U.S. Gulf of Mexico is going to fall off a cliff or anything, but strictly because the pace of development is almost impossible to contend with when you’re bringing 250,000-barrel-per-day FPSOs online every year,” he said.
He contrasted that with the U.S. Gulf, where recent discoveries have generally become smaller, leading operators to prioritize infrastructure-led exploration and tieback developments that connect new finds to existing production facilities.
“In the U.S. Gulf, the discovery size is starting to shrink,” Nuti said. “Sometimes it goes from discovery to first production in a year, which is absolutely amazing… However, they would need probably 10 to 20 of those to match and contend with one large FPSO.”
While the Gulf of Mexico continues to benefit from new high-pressure, high-temperature developments, Nuti said Guyana and Suriname possess a different advantage: large frontier discoveries capable of supporting standalone floating production, storage and offloading vessels (FPSOs), each producing hundreds of thousands of barrels per day.
He also pointed to additional upside from future gas developments in the basin, including floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) projects, which he suggested may not yet be fully reflected in current forecasts.
“In Guyana and Suriname, we have FLNG, which is perhaps even underestimated in some of these forecasts,” Nuti said. “That will be exciting to watch and see how that plays out.”
Guyana is already producing more than 900,000 barrels of oil per day from four FPSOs offshore, with additional developments under construction. Suriname is preparing for first oil from the GranMorgu project in Block 58 later this decade, while additional developments in Blocks 52 and 53 are expected to expand the country’s offshore production profile.
