Though the Hammerhead area was targeted for the fourth development project in the Stabroek block offshore Guyana, the high quality oil discovered back in July during the appraisal drilling at the Yellowtail field has changed the plans for the sequence of production.
According to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hess Corporation, John Hess, the Yellowtail-1 and 2 discoveries will support ExxonMobil’s plans for the project to follow Payara, both of which will produce 220,000 barrels of oil per day. The is in addition to the 120,000 bpd Liza Phase 1 and 220,000 bpd Liza Phase 2 developments.
The CEO made this comment during his most recent participation in the Fireside Chat at the J.P. Morgan U.S. All Stars Conference held this year virtually.
During the event, Hess whose company holds a 30 percent stake in the Stabroek Block, was keen to note that Yellowtail-1 and Yellowtail-2 represent an impressive resource that is light and will most likely be a very low cost development. He added that pre-development work has already commenced for it to support a fourth FPSO.
The CEO said, “…We are relatively optimistic that this will be the fourth ship of about 220,000 barrels of oil per day… There is potential for seven ships…But we are seeing right now, five ships producing 750,000 barrels of oil per day by 2026.”
He added, “…We are currently correlating well logs to seismic data and we see a lot more running room for the block…We are still in the early innings for Guyana. It continues to get bigger and better.”
Back in July, OilNOW reported announcements by officials that appraisal drilling at Yellowtail-2 identified two additional high-quality hydrocarbon-bearing reservoirs, one adjacent to, and the other below the Yellowtail field. It has served to push the previously known eight billion barrels of oil equivalent resources well beyond that mark.
