Hess announces oil discovery at Pinktail, offshore Guyana

Hess announced another oil discovery on the Stabroek Block offshore Guyana at Pinktail. The Pinktail well encountered 220 ft (67 m) of net pay in high quality oil bearing sandstone reservoir. Pinktail is located approximately 21.7 miles (35 km) southeast of the Liza Phase 1 development, which began production in December 2019, and 3.7 miles (6 Kim) southeast of Yellowtail-1. Pinktail was drilled in 5,938 ft (1,810 m) of water by Noble Corp‘s Noble Sam Croft drillship.

In addition to successful appraisal of the Turbot discovery, the Turbot-2 well encountered 43 ft (13 m) of net pay in a newly identified, high quality oil bearing sandstone reservoir separate from the 75 ft (23 m) of high quality, oil bearing sandstone reservoir pay encountered in the original Turbot-1 discovery well. These results will be incorporated into future developments. The Turbot-2 discovery is located approximately 37 miles (60 km) to the southeast of the Liza Phase 1 development and 2.5 miles (4 km) from Turbot-1. Turbot-2 was drilled in 5,790 ft (1,765 m) of water by the Noble Sam Croft.

“We are happy to announce our 20th significant discovery on the Stabroek Block, which will add to the discovered recoverable resource estimate of more than 9 billion barrels of oil equivalent,” said Hess CEO John Hess.

Separately, the Liza Unity floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel set sail from Singapore to Guyana in early September. The FPSO will be utilized for the Liza Phase 2 development, which is expected to begin production in early 2022, with a production capacity of approximately 220,000 gross bbl/day of oil. The Liza Destiny FPSO is currently producing approximately 120,000 gross bbl/day of oil.

The Stabroek Block is 6.6 million acres. At least six FPSOs are expected to be online by 2027 with the potential for up to 10 FPSOs on the block to develop the current discovered recoverable resource base. ExxonMobil affiliate Esso Exploration and Production Guyana is the operator and holds 45% interest in the Stabroek Block. Hess Guyana Exploration holds 30% interest and CNOOC Petroleum Guyana holds a 25% interest.