Guyana’s oil discoveries bring excitement for prospects in West Africa

Guyana’s oil discoveries bring excitement for prospects in West Africa – Geoscientist

Nov 24, 2019 News

By Kemol King

Since 2015, oil companies operating offshore Guyana have made 16 discoveries which place the country’s estimated recoverable hydrocarbon resources in excess of six billion barrels of oil equivalent.

Geoscientist and Management Consultant for Getech, Dr. William Heins

A geoscientist who recently presented at Guyana’s second annual Guyana International Petroleum Business Summit and Exhibition (GIPEX) at the Marriott Hotel, spoke to reporters about the Atlantic Mirror Theory.
It’s the assumption that the distribution of natural resources on both sides of the South Atlantic is similar, because the land masses were once joined, millions of years ago.
Dr. William Heins is a Geologist and Management Consultant for Getech, a firm that offers geology specific consulting services for governments and companies. He has studied the earth’s history to understand the distribution of resources today.
A long time ago, all the earth’s landmass was a supercontinent called Pangaea. Due to plate tectonics, the continents we know today were slowly formed by the breaking up of Pangaea and the drifting of those landmasses for millions of years.
Heins explained that originally, there was excitement by oil companies to drill for oil and gas in South America because of the resource pool that was discovered in West Africa.
For instance, the Jubilee field was discovered in Ghana in 2007 and touted to be a considerable reserve that generated excitement for prospects in South America. So when Royal Dutch Shell discovered the Zaedyus field in French Guiana in 2011, the first material discovery in South America’s equatorial margin, “there was a lot of excitement to say that the Jubilee success would be replicated on the South American side,” Heins told reporters on the sidelines of GIPEX.
“There was some disappointment when four subsequent wells failed to substantiate a field as big as Jubilee,” he continued. “But then the Guyana success, I think, has flipped the paradigm so that now, it should be the Africans who are excited about the success on the South American side.”
He said that, in the old days, while the mirror theory was used to promote South America following on the coat tails of Africa, the situation now would have companies chasing African success because Guyana has been successful.
The theory may be further buttressed by the mirroring of certain other natural resources on both sides of the divide.
Heins explained that Ghana and Guyana, though not precisely lining up as mirrors on both sides of the geological divide, do share some similarity in terms of gold reserves.
“Ghana is a leading gold producer of Africa and Guyana has demonstrable gold assets as well… They’re at least illustrative that the kinds of resources in the two countries are similar.”
This is reflected in the fact that both countries have diamond reserves as well.
Even in Liberia, where there are iron resources, Heins said that “that may have something to tell you about iron resources on the South American side.”
For the geologist, who has worked with ExxonMobil for almost two decades, it is important to note that the Atlantic Mirror Theory is not an exact science.
He wanted to emphasise that it’s not exactly true that the distribution of resources would be the same, explaining that the time period over which the hydrocarbon endowment, for instance, of different countries along the margin were created spans tens of millions of years, and that many different things happened in different places during that time.
He said that though there is very good opportunity across West Africa, his conclusion is that each of the countries being considered has had a unique combination of environmental factors that led to the formation of the hydrocarbon reserves, “even though they share some genetic heritage.”
Despite his doubt, the geologist said that it is plausible to think about what could exist, based on what is being seen on the other side of the Atlantic divide.