ExxonMobil has more than 30 leads to explore on Stabroek Block

Jul 20, 2019 News

ExxonMobil and its other partners on the Stabroek Block, Hess Corporation and CNOC/NEXEN, have had a wonderful run of success with discoveries such as Pacora, Longtail, Pluma, Ranger and Hammerhead.
According to Exxon, these are all significant, multi-hundred-million type discoveries in their own right. However, the exploration future for the block is still in its early stage as there remain more than 30 leads that have been identified for drilling.
In fact, the Stabroek block basin will have four rigs operating with the fourth coming in by the end of this year.
ExxonMobil recently stated that two of the rigs will be roughly working on exploration, with the other two working on development, recognizing that there are time clocks and other factors that need to be considered.
It was further noted by company officials that some of the things being done on the block from a digital standpoint are phenomenal. They said for example that drilling for a section of one of the holes for the bloc was, completely automated, using digital technology.
First in the industry to do it, officials noted that this has the potential to save lots of time, but very importantly, to take people out of harm’s way from the rig floor. They said that this is a hugely important step.
Further, it was noted that Exxon is advancing digitally in all aspects of drillship development. These boats are equipped with fiber optic connectivity. This means that they are all connected through a digital hub. Exxon representatives said, “There’ll be digital twins, both in Georgetown and Houston. Our people will be able to work completely differently than they worked before. And we expect to see a significant prize from reliability improvement as a result of all of that.”
Exxon said that this high performance computing is what really enables it to rapidly create potential scenarios for development and be confident that it can rapidly assimilate new data and new scenarios and do scenario based approaches to development decisions, and quickly understand what could be done with no regrets.
Company Executives said, “The rest of this I think is pretty clear. It isn’t just technology, technology in and of itself is not the game. The game is how do you apply that technology and how do you integrate that technology with all the capabilities you’ve got. And I think this example is the best example that we have today of where we are doing that to an extraordinary degree.”

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