Home / Newsroom

Newsroom

Bluebird and Guyana

With the announcement of the Liza strike by ExxonMobil in November 2016, deepwater offshore Guyana became the hottest Deepwater Frontier Basin play in the world. As it happens, Bluebird’s President, Adrian Digby, led the earliest exploration efforts. In  2013 he supervised the first deepwater high resolution multibeam geochemical survey in Guyanan waters which produced the first indications of presence of a hydrocarbon cycle. Unfortunately, the survey was interrupted by a Venezuelan warship which claimed that the research vessel was operating in Venezuelan, not Guyanan waters, a dispute that was thought to have been resolved years ago.

A party from the warship boarded the research boat, and, accompanied by the warship, its captain was directed to proceed to an anchorage of Isla Margarita. Through careful use of diplomatic skills, Digby was successful in helping prevent the incarceration of the crew.  And after successfully extricating himself and the crew from the imminent  hostage situation, the boat was permitted to leave with the Venezuelan Judge commenting that “He (Digby)was welcome back anytime”.

A year later, Digby led a second survey, this time a little further east and in (mostly) undisputed waters in the Stabroek block on what is now the world class 1.4bn barrel discovery named Liza.   The discovery was not a surprise but the magnitude of the find was and now it appears that Guyana can look forward to many other viable finds that need not be quite as spectacular as Liza once Exxon has established the necessary infrastructure.  This further development is expected to have a major economic impact on Guyana. In January 1917, the country announced the establishment of the new office of the Petroleum Directorate. There remains is a lot to be done. At present, no deepwater port exists.   The multibeam research vessel had to anchor 11km offshore as a 7m draft could not be accommodated and the pilot boat had to be taken when Digby was invited to present the results of the survey to the Guyanan Department of Geology and Mines in 2014. .

It appears that new and existing players like Anadarko, CGX, and Tullow will become very active in this basin, but Venezuela may still pursue whatever jurisdiction they feel they can justify.