APA Corp, which has made several oil discoveries offshore Suriname, is in discussions about the possibility to install an LNG platform offshore Suriname and neighboring Guyana, APA Vice President Gary Clark said at an energy conference this week.
APA seeks to re-inject the natural gas, the byproduct of oil offshore Suriname, under the surface in the medium term, and could look to export it as LNG in the long term, Clark said at the conference in Denver, as carried by Bloomberg.
APA Corp. partners with French supermajor TotalEnergies in Suriname, with a 50:50 split of the stakes in the Block 58 exploration project. So far, the two have drilled two appraisal wells and another two are scheduled for drilling in the block that the two companies are exploring.
While drilling offshore Suriname holds the potential for some major new discoveries nothing is guaranteed. Last year APA ended drilling at another part of Block 58, which it explores with TotalEnergies because it had failed to find any commercial oil.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Guyana-Suriname Basin could hold up to 32.6 billion barrels of undiscovered oil resources, underscoring the tremendous hydrocarbon potential that the countries share. It is estimated that Suriname's offshore oil discoveries held recoverable oil resources of nearly 2 billion barrels as of the end of 2021.
APA Corp. and TotalEnergies have so far announced five discoveries in the block, prompting predictions that the South American nation could soon start commercial production of crude and reach a daily output rate of 650,000 barrels by 2030.
Neighboring Guyana, for its part, has become a hotspot for exploration and development in recent years after Exxon and Hess found more than 11 billion barrels of oil equivalent offshore the South American country.
Currently, Guyana produces around 360,000 bpd of crude, all from Exxon-operated wells, and could hit 1 million bpd production by 2027.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More