Page 5 - LatAmOil Week 08 2023

LatAmOil COMMENTARY LatAmOil

“We need more competition,” he remarked. reservoirs holding more than 1bn barrels each.
Jagdeo did not specify what part of Stabroek
the government was looking to take back or Looking ahead to tie-backs
exactly when it might initiate the relinquish- According to Routledge, this gap can be rem-
ment process. However, he did indicate that edied by linking Ranger to other sections of
Georgetown was not interested in negotiating Stabroek. EEPGL is looking at other sections of
with EEPGL. The company “cannot keep it,” he the block with the aim of determining whether
declared. “That would be illegal.” Ranger can be linked to them via tie-backs
Despite the vice president’s categorical to support another development project, he
remarks, however, there are signs that the explained.
ExxonMobil subsidiary may be hoping to rein “[We] finished drilling the Tarpon well [and
the government’s ability to reclaim pieces of we] moved to Kokwari, and we have a couple of
Stabroek. The company does have a mecha- other prospects out there ... [We] are trying dif-
nism for staving off relinquishment, in that ferent plays to see if we can find some additional
Georgetown will not be able to take any acreage resource that might support the Ranger resource
for which it has secured exploration or devel- being developed,” he said, according to a report
opment licences. And it just so happens that from OilNOW.gy.
EEPGL recently began talking about launching This is hardly an outlandish solution, as all of Ranger is
work programmes in a hitherto unexploited sec- the Stabroek projects targeting fields other than an outlier,
tion of the block. Liza are slated to involve tie-backs. The floating
production, storage and off-loading (FPSO) located close
EEPGL’s plans for Ranger vessel installed to support development work at
More specifically, it said it wanted to determine Payara will also handle crude from the Pacora to the middle
the potential of sites near Ranger, an isolated field, while the Yellowtail FPSO will also handle
oilfield discovered at the Stabroek block within crude from Redtail. Likewise, the Uaru FPSO of Stabroek
the framework of this year’s drilling programme. will handle oil from the Mako and Snoek sites, and quite
On February 9, Alistair Routledge, the pres- while the Whiptail FPSO will handle oil from
ident of EEPGL, confirmed that his company Tilapia and Pinktail. outside the
intended to carry out exploration drilling near However, the Payara, Yellowtail, Uaru and
Ranger. The field lies 60 km north-west of Liza, Whiptail projects are all targeting fields within “Golden Lane”
the first and thus far the only section of Stabroek the “Golden Lane” – that is, within the dense
to start production. It is the most isolated hydro- and narrow band of oil discoveries at Stabroek’s
carbon-bearing site identified within the block south-eastern end. Ranger, by contrast, is a rel-
to date, as well as one of the deepest, and was ative outlier, located closer to the middle of the
discovered in 2018. block and quite outside the boundaries of the
Routledge described the Ranger field as “Golden Lane.” So even if EEPGL makes addi-
relatively little compared to other sections of tional discoveries in the region (such as at Tar-
Stabroek, saying it was not capable of supporting pon and Kokwari, both of which will be drilled
a stand-alone development project. His state- to the north-west of Liza) and connects them to
ment is in line with the estimates made by indus- Ranger via tie-backs, it may still end up leaving
try observers; Ranger was initially estimated in quite a bit of the block undeveloped – and there-
July 2018 by Sonya Boodoo, a senior analyst fore vulnerable to relinquishment.
for the Norwegian energy consultancy Rystad Even so, the company does appear to be
Energy, to contain 346mn barrels of crude oil. sensitive to the possibility of losing some of its
Rystad did revise this figure upward to acreage. As such, it will be interesting to see
432mn barrels in July 2022, and S&P Global how it reacts to the government’s moves to set
Platts put forward a figure of 500-600mn bar- the relinquishment process in motion – and, in
rels in December 2022. Nevertheless, Ranger turn, how Guyanese authorities react to its own
is still considerably smaller than the Yellowtail, efforts to step up exploration in the relatively
Uaru and Whiptail projects, all of which target empty waters near Ranger. ™

All of the development projects planned thus far are in the “Golden Lane” at Stabroek (Image: ExxonMobil)

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