The Liza Phase 1 offshore project—Guyana’s first oil-producing project led by ExxonMobil—has reached its full planned production capacity of some 130,000 barrels per day (bpd), Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali said on an online energy event this week.
This year alone, operators are expected to drill as much as 10 appraisal and exploration wells offshore Guyana, Ali said on the Guyana Basin Summit event, as carried by Reuters.
The Liza Phase 2 Project is designed to pump up to 220,000 bpd with a floating, production, storage, and offloading vessel (FPSO), with start-up expected in the middle of next year, Exxon says.
Guyana is one of the top priorities in the U.S. supermajor’s strategy to focus on high-return and cash-generating projects that would allow it to grow its dividend through 2025.
“90 percent of our upstream investments in resource additions, including in Guyana, Brazil and the U.S. Permian Basin, generate a 10 percent return at $35 per barrel or less,” Exxon’s chairman and chief executive Darren Woods said on the investor day earlier this month.
Exxon announced last September its 18th oil discovery offshore Guyana, which adds to its previous estimate of more than 8 billion barrels of discovered recoverable resources in the area.
At the end of September, Exxon said it had made the final investment decision on the Payara offshore field in Guyana, expecting Payara to yield up to 220,000 bpd of crude when commercial production begins in 2024.
This would be the third offshore development project of the supermajor in Guyana, which rose to fame thanks to a string of discoveries in the Stabroek block made by Exxon and its partner Hess Corp.
In less than five years, Exxon and its partners in the Stabroek Block made more than a dozen quality discoveries on the block, making Guyana the newest oil-producing nation in December 2019.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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