No commercial quantity of oil at ExxonMobil’s 1st Canje Block well

…repairs to Liza Destiny gas compressor completed

United States oil giant ExxonMobil’s first foray into the Canje Block was unsuccessful as the company encountered non-commercial quantities of oil at the Bulletwood-1 well offshore Guyana.
The Bulletwood Well is Exxon’s first well in the Canje Block, which lies 180 kilometres offshore Guyana in deep to ultra-deep water.

In an update on Thursday, Exxon’s Government and Public Affairs Advisor Janelle Persaud explained that the well has confirmed seismic interpretation of the geology and shown evidence of non-commercial hydrocarbons.
“Geologic risk is inherent to frontier oil and gas exploration activities. Every well in frontier oil and gas exploration provides invaluable data to inform future activities,” she added.
In fact, Westmount Energy, which owns a stake in JHI – one of Exxon’s partners in the Canje Block – said that while there were non-commercial hydrocarbons, the well encountered quality reservoirs.
“Data collection at Bulletwood-1 confirms the presence of the Guyana-Suriname Basin petroleum system and the potential prospectively of the Canje Block,” the United Kingdom investment company noted.
According to Westmount, Bulletwood-1 is the first of three wells scheduled to be drilled on the block in 2021. The drilling of the other two independent prospects, Jabillo-1 and Sapote-1 – will follow over the coming months.
Drilling of the Bulletwood-1 well commenced on December 30, 2020, using the Stena Carron drillship to a target depth of 6690 metres in 2846 metres of water.
It was previously reported that Bulletwood-1 is a 500-million-barrel oil prospect, similar to the profitable Liza Field wells.
The Canje Block is currently operated by local ExxonMobil subsidiary, Esso Exploration & Production Guyana Limited (35 per cent), with Total (35 per cent), JHI (17.5 per cent) and Mid-Atlantic Oil & Gas Inc (12.5 per cent) as partners.
Westmount holds shares in the Canje Block by owning an indirect interest of 7.7 per cent through JHI Associates. Following a 2018 farm-out to Total, JHI is carried for the drilling of up to four wells, including Bulletwood-1, and is funded for the drilling of additional wells.
Nevertheless, Exxon said on Thursday that it would continue to leverage its deepwater expertise and advanced technology to explore frontier environments with the highest value resource potential.
The US oil major has recorded 80 per cent exploration success offshore Guyana with 18 discoveries in the Stabroek Block, where production started in December 2019 at the Liza Field.
Flaring/compressor
However, ExxonMobil has been under fire in recent weeks over its flaring of gas offshore, which had to be increased owing to technical issues affecting the gas compressor of the Liza Destiny Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel.
On January 29, the oil major said it was experiencing a technical issue with a seal on Liza Destiny’s flash gas compressor resulting in them having to increase flaring above pilot levels in order to maintain safe operations.
The compressor has since been sent to the manufacturer, MAN Energy Solutions in Germany, where technical experts there found an axial vibration of the compressor rotor was the initiating event of the technical issue experienced on January 27. It said the resulting vibration within the compressor was the cause of the mechanical seal failure initially reported.
Additionally, the discharge silencer, which was transported to Germany separately based on the disassembly sequence on the FPSO, was sent for evaluation and assessment to determine the scope of repairs required.
Earlier this week, the oil company had disclosed that the reassembling of the flash gas compressor was completed and it was being prepared for testing.
During a virtual press conference on Thursday, ExxonMobil Guyana Production Manager Mike Ryan revealed that the compressor has been tested on the test bench at the manufacturer’s workshop.
“The mechanical run test was successful and we reviewed the data, and the MAN engineers… and ourselves, we have accepted the results and the machine is getting ready to make its way back to Guyana. We have also completed repairs on the discharge silencer… So good progress there getting ready to send the units back to Guyana,” Ryan stated.
The equipment is expected to arrive next week and is expected to be installed by the end of this month. In preparation for this, Ryan explained that the teams that would be conducting the installation were currently in mandatory quarantine and would be ready immediately to go offshore when the machines arrive.
Meanwhile, the Exxon official also disclosed that they have ordered a more high-tech compressor that would arrive later this year and replace the current gas compressor on the Liza Destiny.
“We ordered this machine last year as a spare, but we had the failure in January and it’s more likely this will be a replacement… These pieces of equipment are complex, it’s not just off the shelf. It’s a specific design. So from the original failure [in 2019-2020] and from this most recent one, we have more information and we recognised that we do have to make permanent upgrades to a new machine and that is our intention,” the Production Manager noted.
On the other hand, Exxon’s Country Manager, Alistair Routledge said the oil company was frustrated and disappointed with its current operations owing to the increased flaring.
“Thank you to the people of Guyana for their patience with what we are dealing with. This is certainly not how we expected to operate… and this has been incredibly frustrating. But we continue to work 24/7 to get the resolution of the issues so that we will have a long-term, highly efficient, reliable, dependable and environmentally-sound operation on Liza Destiny and future projects too,” Routledge stated at the press briefing. (G8)