With every new discovery off the coast of Guyana, analysts have been ramping up their projections for output, making it clear that the new oil producing nation is on course to become one of Latin America’s top producers, potentially second only to Brazil. Now, co-venturer at the Stabroek Block, Hess Corporation, says it estimates that the country will be producing upwards of 1.5 million bpd before the end of the decade.
“It’s one of the major petroleum provinces in the world,” John Hess, CEO of Hess Corporation, said in a recent interview with Daniel Yergin, Vice-Chairman of IHS Markit and Chairman of CERAWeek. “The first three ships that we authorized have a break even between $25 Brent and $35 Brent. We see multi-billion barrels of exploration potential there.”
Hess is a 30% stakeholder in the prolific Stabroek block, with CNOOC holding 25% and operator ExxonMobil, holding the remaining 45% interest.
“Basically, we have one ship on production, 120,000 barrels per day. We have five ships that we have in our plan to get to over 750,000 barrels per day by 2026 and we actually have line of sight for 10 FPSOs…for this decade,” Hess said.
He pointed out that the rate of exploration and discovery of new resources have declined over the years, going from 100 billion a year to 20 billion a year.
“Well, we think people need to explore to grow the resource base and make sure that we have enough oil 10 years from now,” Hess said. “So, I think the real takeaway here is this [Guyana] is a province that’s probably going to be producing upwards of a million to 1.5 million barrels a day before the end of the decade.”
The Stabroek block co-venturers have made 18 discoveries since 2015 amounting to approximately 9 billion barrels of oil equivalent resources.
