Supermajors hunt for El Dorado
Statoil drilling operations. Could the company and its fellow players be searching fruitlessly? (Kjetil Eide/Statoil)
Uruguay, Guyana and Nicaragua could put together a decent soccer team, but they are benchwarmers in oil and gas terms. Proven hydrocarbon reserves in the three Latin American countries add up to zero, and only Uruguay has managed to squeeze a dribble of oil in recent years.
But despite their minor-league prospectivity, all three countries have been on the supermajor radar in the last few months. Total has taken a $200 million bet on deepwater acreage off Uruguay’s coast, ExxonMobil is gearing up to drill its third well offshore Guyana and Statoil continues to shoot seismic in Nicaragua’s Sandino Basin, which is off the country’s Pacific Coast.