MOSCOW (MRC) -- Not only did an ExxonMobil-led consortium begin producing oil from its much-watched Stabroek block in Guyana just a few days ago, but the group has stuck another feather in its exploratory cap, reported S&P Global.
On Monday, the group, which includes Hess Corp and China's CNOOC, announced the 15th discovery on its Stabroek block offshore the tiny South American country. The Mako-1 well is located about six miles southeast of Liza, which was the consortium's first find in May 2015.
On Friday, Liza began producing its first oil from Stabroek, ahead of the original Q1 2020 estimated start date.
Mako-1, drilled in 5,315 feet of water, uncovered about 164 feet of high-quality oil-bearing standstone reservoir, the partners said in a statement. They did not release a separate oil reserves projection but said the discovery adds to their estimate of Stabroek's more than 6 billion boe of current gross recoverable resource.
"New discoveries in this world-class basin have the potential to support additional developments," Mike Cousins, senior vice president of exploration and new ventures at ExxonMobil, said. "Our proprietary full-wave seismic inversion technology continues to help us better define our discovered resource and move rapidly to the development phase."
"Mako-1 ... further underpins a growing resource base for future developments," Hess CEO John Hess said in a statement.
The consortium has four drillships to further explore, appraise and develop new resources in Guyana.
During Q3 the partners said in Q3 they would drill the Urau exploratory well, 10 miles east of Liza.
"The world-class success that ExxonMobil has enjoyed (in Guyana) ensures that interest will continue to remain high" in the country, where Repsol, Tullow Oil and other large global producers are exploring, Ruaraidh Montgomery, an analyst with energy consultancy Welligence, said.
As MRC wrote previously, ExxonMobil's cracker at Notre Dame de Gravenchon, France, had an "unexpected stoppage" on Friday, 6 December, following a technical failure this October. An electric fire Saturday morning, 19 October, 2019, on the ExxonMobil facilities in Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon (Seine Maritime) resulted in a plume of smoke, below the regulatory thresholds, which could remain visible for several days.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,724,670 tonnes in the first ten months of 2019, up by 7% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market in January-October 2019 totalled 1,066,520 tonnes, up by 7% year on year. Supply of block copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymer) and homopolymer of propylene (homopolymer PP) increased, demand for statistical copolymers (PP random copolymer) decreased.
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
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