CGX to invest $90mn in exploration offshore Guyana in 2021

Canada’s CGX Energy is preparing to spend about $90mn on exploration work in Guyana’s offshore zone this year.

The company reported last week that its exploration programme would involve the drilling of two exploration wells at the Corentyne and Demerara blocks, both located offshore Guyana. In a statement, it said it intended to spud the first of these two, Kawa-1, at Corentyne in the second half of 2021. The well design has already been finalised, it noted.

It went on to say that Kawa-1 would be sunk to a depth of around 6,500 metres in 370-metre-deep water. The well will target a stratigraphic trap within the Santonian interval that is believed to be analogous to the oil discoveries reported further east, in Block 58 offshore Suriname.

The statement did not say exactly when work might begin on the second well – Makarapan-1, which will be sunk at the Demerara block. It did report that Makarapan-1 would target a sandstone reservoir in the Aptian interval. Additionally, it said that the well would be sunk to a depth of about 3,500 metres in 1,000-metre-deep water.

CGX and its majority shareholder Frontera Energy (Canada) said earlier this year that their contractor, McDaniel & Associates Consultants, had completed an independent prospective resource (IPR) study and report of the two blocks mentioned above. They said the report, which evaluates all the resources of Demerara while focusing on the Corentyne Main Area and the Corentyne North Area, concluded that these two blocks contained 32 prospects, including 27 at Corentyne and five at Demerara, as of August 31, 2020.

Frontera has put its own consolidated share of the hydrocarbons that may be found within the licence areas at 6.089bn barrels of oil equivalent mean unrisked resources and 1.09bn boe mean risked resources. It based this figure on the fact that it owns 73.8% of equity in CGX, which gives it a consolidated working interest of 82.6% in Corentyne and Demerara.

For its part, CGX has said that its share of amounts to 4.94bn boe in mean unrisked resources and 884.11mn boe in mean risked resources.