No Luck For Exxon On Canje Block, Looking Towards 12-Well Campaign In 2022

Supermajor ExxonMobil has again failed to find commercial hydrocarbons on the Canje Block, offshore Guyana.

The first two wells on the block were the Bulletwood-1 and Jabillo-1. Both were drilled earlier this year and were dry. ExxonMobil tried again though with the Sapote-1 well, spudded during the summer this year using the Stena DrillMAX drillship.

The well was supposed to test Upper Cretaceous reservoirs and is located some 140 miles northeast of Georgetown in 8,360 feet of water.

Westmount Energy said that the Sapote-1 well on the Canje Block encountered non-commercial hydrocarbons in one of the deeper exploration targets.

The company has a stake in the Exxon-operated well via its 7.2 percent shareholding in JHI Associates which is a minority partner with a 17.5 percent stake of the Canje block.

"Sapote-1 is the sixth well, offshore Guyana, that Westmount has participated in via our investee companies, since 2019. This portfolio of drilling outcomes has yielded 3 oil discoveries, but no standalone commercial success to date,” said Gerard Walsh, Westmount’s executive chair.

“While this outcome from the Westmount portfolio is below expectations the results to date provide encouragement and must be viewed in the context of initial 'large step-out' wells, in a frontier setting, evaluating giant stratigraphic prospects while seeking to establish the perimeter of the multiple play fairways both to the northeast and southwest of the prolific Stabroek Block.”

Walsh added that the Canje joint venture group – which comprises Exxon, TotalEnergies, JHI, and Mid-Atlantic Oil & Gas – will now move to analyze and integrate the well data obtained in the 2021 drill program at Canje to high-grade possible future targets on the block.

Westmount also said that Exxon already applied to Guyana’s environmental authorities regarding a 12-well drill program on the block slated for 2022. To remind, JHI has one remaining ‘cost carried’ well under a 2018 farm-out deal with Total.

As for Exxon’s operations in Guyana, it recently increased its estimate of the discovered recoverable resource for the Stabroek Block to around 10 billion oil-equivalent barrels after striking oil there on 21 separate significant discoveries, the latest being Cataback-1 well.

The Liza field within the block is currently producing 120,000 bopd from its first phase of development and is set to expand with a new FPSO in 2022.

To contact the author, email bojan.lepic@rigzone.com