Tullow Oil is aiming to participate in drilling prospects up dip of ExxonMobil’s giant Liza oil discovery off Guyana as soon as next year as the Anglo-Irish independent prepares for a large 3D seismic programme this year.
Tullow Oil is Africa’s leading oil company
The London-listed player and its partners have already identified a number of leads on acreage near ExxonMobil’s prolific Stabroek block and they are encouraged by the US super major’s wildcat miss there at the Skipjack well, as they were by the Liza and recent Payara discoveries.
“We are purposefully updip of that (Liza) setting. So, rather than drilling in over 2000 metres of water, we are going to be drilling in 100 metres,” Tullow Exploration Director Angus McCoss said in an Upstream report.
This will significantly reduce drilling costs and the cost of any eventual field development.
McCoss said three leads have been mapped up-dip of Liza — Kamarang, Kaieteur and Amaila on the Repsol-operated Kanuku block — with this year’s 3D survey on both the Kanuku and Orinduik blocks aiming to firm up prospects before drilling in 2018 and/or 2019.
“What we expect to see in the outboard in the ultra-deepwater sector is a mixture of success (and failure) — and that is what we have seen. The fact that we are seeing the mixed results outboard (in Stabroek) is positive for us, because it is proving charge, but it is also proving that some of the charge is not being retained in the outboard.”
Before Guyana, Tullow will drill off neighbouring Suriname, with the Araku-1 wildcat set to spud on its operated Block 54 in the second half of this year. The company is close to firming up a rig contract.
“It is a very large four-way dip closure, over 300 square kilometres. Geophysical response from a very high fidelity 3D survey that we did there is giving us direct indications of hydrocarbons,” said McCoss.
Araku may hold as many as 500 million barrels of oil in Upper Cretaceous and Jurassic rocks.
