In a candid discussion with Hart Energy, President of ExxonMobil Upstream Company and Vice President of Exxon Mobil Corporation, Liam Mallon, provided a detailed account of Guyana’s journey to becoming a major oil producer. Mallon outlined the inherent risks and strategic decisions that led to the discovery of vast oil reserves in the Stabroek Block.
“It was not that it almost didn’t happen. If you go back and trace the history of Guyana, this is the nature of exploration to some extent,” Mallon said. He outlined the basin’s early history, noting failed attempts in the ’60s and ’70s in shallow waters. ExxonMobil’s hypothesis in the early 2000s proposed deeper waters as the key, a risky endeavor given the expensive drilling costs and limited technology at the time.
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Mallon described how ExxonMobil sought partners to share the risk after Shell exited. “Hess and, at the time, Nexen came in. Some of the biggest, best companies in the world looked at it, but they were the only two bidders,” he explained.
Success was not immediate. “The second well we drilled was dry. If you had drilled that well first, you might not have gone on. That’s just a fact,” he said. Despite these challenges, the first successful well marked the start of a game-changing discovery of the Liza field.
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Reflecting on ExxonMobil’s rapid development in Guyana, Mallon noted, “We’ve gone from zero to now, today, greater than 600,000 [barrels per day] bbl/d…and we’ll grow to the 1.2 [million barrels per day] MMbbl/d capacity we talked about by 2027.” He attributed this success to strong partnerships, innovative technology, and high-quality subsurface conditions.
Mallon praised the synergy between ExxonMobil, its partners, and the Guyanese government. “The way we contracted this with our partners, SBM [Offshore], MODEC, our subsea partners, TechnipFMC, and the quality of our partnership with Hess and the Chinese. You couple all that with the best we have…And you get the basics of what success looks like in our business.”
The lessons from Guyana, Mallon concluded, represent a blueprint for success in the oil and gas industry. “The end of the game would be to repeat that.”