Since 2015, ExxonMobil has made over 35 discoveries at the prolific Stabroek Block offshore Guyana with the Tilapia-1 find encountering the largest high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoir – bigger than the world-class Liza-1 – which put the South American country on the oil and gas map.
Made in February 2019, Tilapia was Exxon’s 11th discovery in Guyana.
Tilapia-1 ‘the big catch’ for Guyanese geoscientist Ashlika Persaud
Exxon said that Tilapia-1 was drilled in a new reservoir and encountered approximately 305 feet (93 metres) of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoir, higher than any other discovery. By comparison, Liza-1, Exxon’s first discovery in 2015, encountered more than 295 feet (90 meters) of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs.
The Yellowtail-1 find, with 292 feet (89 metres) of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoir, came in at a close third.
Tilapia was drilled to a depth of 18,786 feet (5,726 metres) in 5,850 feet (1,783 metres) of water.
In 2019, Westwood Global Energy Group put the resource estimate for ExxonMobil’s Tilapia-1 find in Guyana’s offshore Stabroek Block at 300 million barrels. But new estimates by S&P Global Platts puts the discovery significantly higher. S&P listed Tilapia-1 as holding between 1 billion and 1.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil-equivalent resources. Liza-1 has been pegged at 800 million to 1.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil-equivalent resources.
Norway’s Rystad Energy ranked the Tilapia find as being the third biggest conventional discovery for the first quarter of 2019. Cyprus’ Glaucus and South Africa’s Brulpadda were ranked number 1 and 2 respectively.
It will be included in Exxon’s 6th Stabroek Block development, alongside the Whiptail and Pinktail reservoirs.
Whiptail will target 40-65 development wells, with production levels expected between 220,000 and 275,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd). A floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel will be used to produce the crude, with two million barrels of oil storage capacity.
All the wells at the Stabroek Block are named after fishes found offshore Guyana.
