Apache’s historic oil discovery offshore Suriname has opened a new chapter in the potential of the Guyana-Suriname basin which the US Geological Survey (USGS) has long said could contain more than 13.6 billion barrels of oil and 32 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
If the USGS survey is anything to go by, at least half of the estimated oil resource has already been found offshore Guyana. The Maka Central-1 discovery at Suriname’s Block 58 has now proven that a working hydrocarbon system exists on the Dutch side of the basin.
Maka Central-1 successfully tested for the presence of hydrocarbons in multiple stacked targets in the upper Cretaceous-aged Campanian and Santonian intervals and encountered both oil and gas condensate.
“The well proves a working hydrocarbon system in the first two play types within Block 58,” Apache CEO John Christmann said on Tuesday. “Preliminary formation evaluation data indicates the potential for prolific oil wells.”
In addition, “the size of the stratigraphic feature, as defined by 3-D seismic imaging, suggests a substantial resource,” Christmann said.
Maka Central-1 successfully tested for the presence of hydrocarbons in multiple stacked targets in the upper Cretaceous-aged Campanian and Santonian intervals and encountered both oil and gas condensate.
Block 58 adjoins the Stabroek Block in neighboring Guyana, where an ExxonMobil-led consortium has made 15 discoveries in four-and-a-half years and last month became the first offshore producers of oil in that country from their Liza field. Exxon has found more than 6 billion barrels of oil at Stabroek.
As a result, the Block 58 partners and analysts are optimistic about the Maka discovery, which is on trend with the gusher of Stabroek finds.
Apache and Total, which are 50-50 partners in Block 58, said their next well will test the same-aged upper Cretaceous intervals in a separate and distinct stratigraphic feature.
