Responding to a question during its quarterly earnings conference call on Friday, Exxon Mobil Corporation’s Vice President of Investor Relations and Secretary, Jeffrey Woodbury, said the dry hole encountered at the Sorubim-1 well offshore Guyana does not condemn prospect opportunities for the 6.6 million acres Stabroek Block.
Mr. Woodbury was asked if the negative results at Sorubim, a potentially different play type, would mean the prospect of a third rig option for exploration has been abandoned. “Every time we drill one of these wells we pick up some additional insight and learnings and I wouldn’t say that the well in itself condemn the play or the prospect opportunities we’ve got in Stabroek Block.”
He said the potential of a third rig remains a possibility, ”…but we will make that decision based on the technical maturity of our prospects as we integrate the real time data that we are getting from Sorubim, from Liza 5 and other analysis that we’re doing based on the 3D seismic that we went ahead and took.”
The current plan, he said, is to run two rigs in parallel; one primarily focusing on the development wells for Liza Phase 1 and the second would be following up prior discoveries. “We will think about how we modify that rig line based on how we mature the technical prospects,” he stated.
To date, ExxonMobil has discovered more than 3.2 billion barrels of oil in the Stabroek block and will begin production by 2020 with the Liza Phase 1 development.
