High-level briefing on the production of Oil & Gas commences

Exxon Mobil on Wednesday began a series of high-level briefing with the key Government Ministers and Opposition parliamentarians at the Marriott Hotel at Kingston, Georgetown.

According to Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman the briefing will be focused on the technical aspect of the company’s operations here, mainly the Liza find and what’s the next step in the path to full-fledged production in 2020.

In a short speech before the commencement of today’s session (Wednesday, February 01, 2017), Trotman noted that “what is different about this briefing is that (the company) comes bearing good news about the actual development of the Liza resources, that is how do we intend to take it towards production by 2020 and to give updates on new technologies and techniques that will be deployed.”

On the policy end, he added that it is important that policy makers stay informed to be able to use the resource for the benefit of all Guyanese. He said citizens in each region will also be briefed on the development of the Nation’s natural resources.

“This is the beginning of a series of engagements starting with policy makers and extending to citizens of Guyana extending through all ten regions” and also Guyanese residing in the United States and different parts of the Caribbean Region.

Other Ministers at Wednesday’s meeting were Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, Ministers of State, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Business, Agriculture, Minister of Public Infrastructure and Minister of Communities.

Exxon announced early in January positive results from its Payara-1 well offshore Guyana. The well encountered more than 95 feet of high-quality, oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs, and is the second discovery on the Stabroek Block.

Payara is ExxonMobil’s second oil discovery on the Stabroek Block targeted similar aged reservoirs that were proven successful at the company’s Liza discovery.

In addition to the Payara discovery, appraisal drilling at Liza-3 has identified an additional high-quality, deeper reservoir directly below the Liza field. This deeper reservoir is estimated to contain resources between 100 million and 150 million oil-equivalent barrels.

In 2016, the company disclosed that its Liza-3 well was successful, further solidifying the potential recoverable oil in the reservoir from its Liza-1 find. The drillship Stena Carron drilled Liza 3 about 2.7 miles from the Liza 1 discovery.

“Based on the Liza-3 results, we now expect the estimated recoverable resources to be at the upper end of the previously announced range of 800 million to 1.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent,” Hess said when announcing its 2016 third quarter results.

First production would come online sometime in 2020 or 2021.