Latest update May 22nd, 2026 12:38 AM
ExxonMobil mobilises ship to drill third well
ExxonMobil has mobilised drillship Stena Carron to the Payara wildcat, offshore Guyana
Minister Raphael Trotman
where the US supermajor will test the third prospect on the same block as its massive Liza oil discovery.
According to a report in the Upstream online news site, the drillship left the Liza-3 location early Thursday for a 10-mile move north-east to the Payara location, where ExxonMobil and its partners will drill the latest wildcat on the sprawling Stabroek block.
US independent Hess and Nexen, a CNOOC subsidiary, are partners.
Hess chief executive, John Hess, said on a third-quarter conference call, that Payara was a “very similar stratigraphic trap and same kind of reservoir sequence as the other Liza wells”.
Results from Payara are expected in January.
The Stena Carron drilled Liza-3 to a total depth of 18,100 feet in 6000 feet of water on a location about 2.7 miles (4.3 kilometres) from the Liza 1 discovery.
The Liza-3 well hit around 200 feet (61 metres) of net pay “in the same high-quality reservoirs” as the first two Liza wells, according to block partner Hess.
“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 third quarter results.
All the wells are located on the giant 6.6 million-acre Stabroek block, which runs
The drillship Stena Carron
almost the entire length of Guyana’s offshore zone.
According to a Government statement, Hess Corp and ExxonMobil are looking to the end of 2017 to develop the Liza field.
Hess’ third quarter report indicated that a used Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel will be retrofitted for the environment at the Liza well. “Moving Liza to production is very important for all parties,” Hess Corp noted.
Meanwhile, Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman told the Government Information Agency in a recent interview that “a number of other companies have asked to be given exploratory permits” following Exxon’s significant discovery.
“We have Tullow which is a British company, here; Repsol, the Spanish company, we’re in talks with them right now because they’ve asked for extra acreage so to speak. There is CGX, of course, and Total, which is a French company, wrote recently asking for the ability to come and to do some exploration in Guyana,” Minister Trotman pointed out.
These companies will have to first conduct their seismic surveys before drilling exploration can begin, the minister noted.
Last year, ExxonMobil announced that it had struck oil in its offshore concessions. Since then, two other wells confirmed that the find was significant.
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