ExxonMobil has made over 30 discoveries in Guyana’s Stabroek Block, but none have managed to boot the Ranger-1 well from its rank as the deepest to ever be drilled.
The Ranger discovery, made in 2018, was Exxon’s sixth find and its deepest that year, located about 60 miles northwest of the prolific Liza field. At that time, Exxon had accumulated five discoveries in the Stabroek Block, totaling an estimated 3.2 billion recoverable oil-equivalent barrels. The Ranger find provided the co-venturers with valuable insights into the block’s potential.
Exxon’s Ranger discovery: The forgotten wild cat? | OilNOW
In July 2018, Rystad Energy’s Senior Analyst, Sonya Boodoo, estimated that Ranger could hold around 346 million barrels of oil. This estimate was revised to 432 million barrels in July 2022. By December 2022, S&P Global Platts further updated the estimate to between 500 and 600 million barrels.
Ranger is situated in a carbonate play, which is more porous than the sandstone reservoirs where other discoveries have been made. Carbonates, primarily composed of calcium carbonate, are sedimentary rocks formed in marine environments. They are mostly of biological origin, consisting of fragments of marine organisms, skeletons, coral, algae, and precipitation, making them chemically more active than the sand that forms sandstones.
Exxon planned to test the discovery, President of the Guyana operations, Alistair Routledge said back in February last year. Routledge described the Ranger discovery as small, noting that it would not be particularly economical as a stand-alone development.
The slot could be taken though.
Exxon has its 35-well exploration campaign ongoing. It is the largest single exploration campaign pursued by any explorer offshore Guyana. The Stabroek Block has so far delivered 11.6 billion oil-equivalent barrels.
