Kosmos Energy Suriname (KES) on April 4th 2018 is expected to spud its first Exploration Well in Block 45 offshore Suriname. Drilling of the Exploration Well in Block 45 will immediately be followed by the drilling of another one in Block 42. KES has contracted the Ultra Deepwater Drillship ENSCO DS-12 (fka Atwood Achiever) of UK based Ensco plc, to perform this Drilling Operation. ENSCO DS-12 is a fully equipped 2013 built modern drilling vessel with accommodation for approximately 200 crew and onboard oil and gas experts. The vessel has the capacity to drill in water depths above 3000 meters and drilling depths up to 12.000 meters.

Expectations are high that this drilling campaign may very well result in the first commercial oil discovery in the offshore area of Suriname. This is because the conditions in the area where the KES drilling will take place, looks similar to those in the Stabroek/Canje Blocks in Guyana. ExxonMobil has been very successful there and since its first Liza-I discovery, the company in less than 3 years has scored seven substantial oil finds in the Stabroek area, with at least 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil equivalent (boe) in the Liza, Payara, Liza Deep, Snoek, Turbot , Ranger and Pacora reservoirs.

KES’ Block 42 in Suriname, together with Block 58 (Apache) and Block 59 (ExxonMobil/Hess/Statoil), geographically is adjacent to ExxonMobile’s Stabroek/Canje Blocks in Guyana. The distance from the Turbot- reservoir in Guyana until the border of Suriname’s Block 42 is approximately 40 km, while the distance from Turbot to the world class Liza-reservoir in Guyana is approximately 50 km. KES’s Block 45 and Block 42 are contiguous and cover more than 11,000 square kilometers, with water depths from 200 to 2000 meters in Block 45 and 1800 to 2700 meters in Block 42.

Both the Suriname acreage and the Guyana acreage are part of the Guyana-Suriname Basin, which according to the United States Geologic Survey ranks as the 2nd most prospective, underexplored offshore oil basin, with an estimated 13.6 billion barrels of oil and 32 trillion cubic feet of natural gas yet to be discovered.  The basin has attracted attention of leading exploration companies, including major IOC’s like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Statoil and smaller companies with successful track records in developing the Atlantic Margin offshore West Africa as Kosmos Energy, Tullow Oil and Apache.

KES holds rights to conduct exploration in Blocks 42 and 45, as a result of PSC’s with Staatsolie, the NOC of Suriname. After obtaining exploration rights for both Blocks, KES has entered into a joint exploration agreement with Chevron (50%) for Block 45 and a farm-out agreement with Chevron and Hess (33% each) for Block 42. Andrew Inglis, Chairman and CEO of Kosmos Energy, considers Suriname as “a top ranked opportunity in our exploration portfolio, given recent industry success in the basin.”