The second shallow offshore bid round in Suriname was launched in November 2023 at the ICE Conference in Madrid. Management Presentations and Virtual Data Rooms have been available since 18th December 2023, with bids due on 31st May 2024. There are 11 Blocks on offer, covering a total of 34,520 km2 in water depths of 150 m and less, including some areas never previously licensed.
The blocks lie on the offshore continental shelf to the north of Tambaredjo and to the south and southeast of the recent light oil discoveries made in the deeper water Guyana-Suriname Basin. The Tambaredjo Field is a billion-barrel onshore field discovered in the 1960s with heavy, biodegraded oil in shelfal sandstones of Paleocene age.
The Campanian-Santonian distal shelf and intra-slope turbidite plays of the deepwater area were opened up by the Liza-1 well offshore Guyana in 2015. These plays have now been successfully extended into Suriname’s offshore where a series of substantial discoveries have been made by Apache and TotalEnergies in Block 58 and where the play has recently been extended further east into Block 52 with the success of the Roystonea-1 exploration well drilled by Petronas and ExxonMobil in late 2023.
An older source rock
In addition to the prolific Albian to Turonian-aged source rocks – locally referred to as the Canje Group – that supply these discoveries, recent petroleum systems analysis commissioned by Staatsolie has also confirmed the generative capacity of the Lower Cretaceous Aptian source rocks. This reduces the reliance on long-distance migration in the blocks on offer, and opens up the potential in the deeper Aptian and Jurassic stratigraphy.
The potential for multiple plays is therefore present, including stratigraphic and structural traps in both carbonate and clastic plays of the Upper and Lower Cretaceous, as well as the overlying Tertiary stratigraphy. Over 90 prospects and leads have been identified on the current bid round acreage on the existing 2D and 3D data. Proven analogues are found for the deeper plays on the North African conjugate margin, and in the newly opened South Atlantic Pelotas and Orange Basins.
Significant attention expected
The 2024 Bid Round data room consists of a data package of 12 wells, 15,000 km of existing 2D seismic data and 4,371 km2 of 3D seismic. Recently acquired multiclient 3D seismic covering the blocks of interest is also available to lease, and is being managed separately by the acquiring consortium consisting of BGP, CGG and TGS. This covers the western parts of the open acreage, Blocks 1,2, and 9-12.
All blocks are offered on an initial 3-year Exploration Phase basis, comprising competitive “minimum work programme” terms with additional biddable components:
- For blocks completely covered by the newly acquired multi-client 3D seismic data, the minimum commitment is to lease the 3D data and commit to a well in the first Exploration Phase
- For blocks with only existing 2D, or that are only partially covered by the new 3D, the commitment will require the lease or acquisition of 3D seismic, followed by a drill or drop decision
- Blocks with very limited data are being offered on fully biddable terms
The acreage on offer also benefits from new, more favourable, fiscal terms.
This is the third Surinamese bid round held since 2020, following on from the Shallow Offshore Bid Round in 2020/21 and the Demerara Bid Round in 2022-23. Given the interest that was shown in these rounds with blocks awarded to companies including TotalEnergies, Chevron, Shell, and QatarEnergy, the second shallow-water bid round is also expected to receive significant attention.
