On August 30. Exxon announced the ninth discovery offshore Guyana at the Hammerhead-1 well, adding to the resource base of 4 billion barrels of oil equivalent found since the Liza discovery in 2015, according to Westwood Global Energy Group.
The new Tertiary play opens the pathway for the emergence of a possible 10 billion barrel plus province, second only in its scale as a new emerging province this century to the Pre-Salt of Brazil.
This scale of resource could support a plateau production level of over a million barrels a day for a decade or more.
ExxonMobil initiated oil and gas exploration activities in Guyana in 2008, collecting and evaluating substantial 3-D seismic data that led to the company safely drilling its first exploration well in 2015, Liza-1.
Liza is expected to be onstream in 2020 and there was already the potential for Guyana to reach 750 thousand barrels a day by 2025.
The significance of Hammerhead is that it opens a new play in sandstone reservoirs of Tertiary age, younger and distinct from the previously successful Cretaceous aged reservoirs in the Liza sandstone play and Ranger carbonate plays.
