HOUSTON, TEXAS — Hess Corporation’s Guyana Appraisal Director Tim Chapman said advances in seismic imaging played a major role in unlocking Guyana’s offshore oil resources after decades of unsuccessful exploration activity in the basin.
Chapman spoke during a panel discussion at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston focused on Guyana’s offshore development over the last decade. Other panelists included ExxonMobil Guyana President Alistair Routledge, ExxonMobil Guyana Development Manager Kyle Countryman, CNOOC Vice President International Developments Keith Henderson, University of Guyana Vice Chancellor Professor Paloma Mohamed, and TechnipFMC Onshore Operations Director Omon Dibua.
“It’s easy now to look at the basin and think anyone could make a discovery there. A lot of people forget what it looked like back in the 2015 timeframe, where it was 40, 50 wells that were drilled and nothing had been discovered,” Chapman said
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Oil companies use seismic surveys to map rock formations beneath the seabed before drilling exploration wells. The technology helps companies identify areas where oil and gas may be trapped underground. Chapman explained that one of the major challenges offshore Guyana was imaging what geologists refer to as “flat traps” — broad underground formations with very subtle geological changes.
“The issue is, in the 70s, you recognized that there were these flat traps out there, but you really didn’t have the tool to image it on that scale,” he stated.
According to Chapman, earlier exploration campaigns in other offshore regions often relied on smaller seismic surveys that covered limited sections of a basin. Instead, ExxonMobil and its partners moved to acquire a much larger 3D seismic dataset offshore Guyana covering about 15,000 square kilometers.
“At the time, it was world scale,” Chapman noted. He said the broader dataset gave companies a clearer understanding of the basin and improved confidence ahead of drilling.
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“Ultimately, that kind of set the foundation for being able to be so successful so quickly across the last decade,” Chapman stated.
The first major offshore oil discovery in Guyana was made at the Liza-1 well in the Stabroek Block in 2015. Since then, ExxonMobil and its co-venturers Hess and CNOOC have announced more than 30 discoveries offshore Guyana and brought four floating production, storage and offloading vessels into operation.
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