The Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) presented ExxonMobil with the OTC Distinguished Achievement Award in recognition of its affiliate Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited’s Liza Developments in the offshore Stabroek Block.
OTC said Liza Phase 1 was “one of the fastest projects” of its type in the industry, cycling from discovery to production in less than five years, compared to the historical 10-year timeline for projects of this magnitude.
“Liza Phase 2 then came online about two years after. Within eight years of discovery, total production from the Liza field is approaching 400,000 barrels per day — helping to responsibly meet the world’s energy needs at a critical time,” it said.
Developed in two phases, Liza was Guyana’s first discovery in 2015 when the country had no active offshore oil industry, and little was known about its metocean and seabed conditions.
“ExxonMobil Guyana applied technology and novel execution approaches to discover, define and rapidly develop the Liza field in a frontier oil and gas location, turning it into one of the most successful deepwater developments in the world,” the OTC said as reasoning for its award.
The Liza-1 discovery encountered more than 295 feet (90 meters) of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs. It was safely drilled to 17,825 feet (5,433 metres) in 5,719 feet (1,743 metres) of water. Currently, the Liza Destiny and Liza Unity floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels are developing over a billion barrels of oil.
Liza Deep was announced in January 2017. An appraisal well, Liza-3, identified an additional high-quality, deeper reservoir directly below the Liza field. According to Rystad Energy, it contains some 591 million barrels
Exxon had said that it spent approximately US$230 million drilling the landmark Guyana discovery well and early drill costs for the follow-on wells. This led to the largest discovery in the world in 2015 when the company announced it had found significant volumes of recoverable oil, later assessed to be between 800 million to 1.4 billion barrels.
