Hess Raises 2020 Capex To $3B To Develop Bakken, Guyana

U.S. oil producer Hess Corporation said on Tuesday it expects to allocate US$3 billion for production, development, and exploration in 2020, focusing on high-return investments in the Bakken shale play and offshore Guyana.

Hess Corporation is boosting this year’s capital and exploratory budget from the 2019 E&P capital and exploratory expenditures of US$2.7 billion, as expected at the end of Q3 2019.  

More than 80 percent of Hess’s capital and exploratory budget for 2020 will go for increased production and development of the corporation’s production in the Bakken in North Dakota and offshore Guyana, where Hess is a minority partner of ExxonMobil in the first development of the Latin American country’s oil resources.

Hess expects its net production to average between 330,000 and 335,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) this year, excluding Libya operations. Net production in the Bakken is seen averaging 180,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2020.

“In the Bakken, we plan to maintain a six rig program through the year, which is expected to result in our net production growing to approximately 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by the end of 2020,” chief operating officer Greg Hill said in a statement.

Offshore Guyana, Hess will focus on the Liza Phase 2 development, the front end engineering design (FEED) work to develop the nearby Payara oilfield, and on exploration. Hess plans to explore for resources in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, too, Hill noted.

Just yesterday, Exxon and Hess said they had revised upward the estimate of recoverable resources offshore Guyana by 2 billion barrels of oil equivalent to 8 billion oil-equivalent barrels, also announcing the 16th oil discovery on the Stabroek Block.

“We also continue to see multibillion barrels of additional exploration potential remaining,” said John Hess, chief executive of Hess, which holds 30 percent in the Stabroek Block, where Exxon is the operator.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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