New oil frontier beckons offshore Latin America
ExxonMobil’s discovery offshore Guyana has renewed hopes that a stretch of waters off Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana will emerge
More broadly, it also shows that companies are still willing to drill high-risk, high-reward exploration wells in a low oil-price environment. ExxonMobil did not release many details of the deep-water find, Liza-1, drilled in the Stabroek Block, but called it a “significant oil discovery”. The company and its minority partners in the block, Hess and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (Cnooc), say they will spend the next few months determining if the discovery is commercial and looking at nearby prospects. The companies will hope that their progress in the region goes better than Shell’s exploration campaign in neighbouring French Guiana, which started with a bang but ended with a fizzl

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