PetroChina snaps up acreage in global exploration hot spot

Suriname’s state-owned oil company Staatsolie has awarded PetroChina, a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), production sharing contracts for offshore blocks 14 and 15 after evaluating competing bids for the acreage.

Under the PSCs signed on Friday, PetroChina has obtained exploration, development and production rights for blocks 14 and 15. Staatsolie will hold a 30% participating interest in both tracts via its subsidiary Paradise Oil Company (POC).

The blocks are located in the eastern part of the Suriname-Guyana basin and adjacent to Block 52, where partners Petronas and ExxonMobil have made oil and gas discoveries for which they are evaluating development options.

Water depths in Block 14 range from 50 to 75 metres, and from 75 to 150 metres in Block 15. The blocks were offered in the Suriname Shallow Offshore 2 Bid Round 2023-2024.

The PSCs were signed by Annand Jagesar, Staatsolie’s managing director; CNPC representative, Yu Zhang; and Rekha Bissumbhar, POC director.

POC and PetroChina will also sign a joint operating agreement (JOA), which will set out the agreements between the contract parties regarding the exploration, development and production of oil and gas, and the distribution of the costs, risks and revenues of the project.

Staatsolie, via POC, also has participation interests in blocks 5, 6, 7 and 8, which were part of the Shallow Offshore Bid Round 2020-2021. Exploration activities in these blocks are ongoing and recent studies show that the geology of the shallow offshore looks promising, noted Staatsolie.

With the two newly concluded PSCs, approximately 46% of the Surinamese offshore area is now under contract.

Staatsolie's strategy is to have as much of the offshore as possible under contract with international parties.

The national company said it is invested in studying all data from all blocks in the Surinamese part of the Guyana-Suriname basin, which allows it to become the "master of the basin".

“This means that Staatsolie is increasingly and better able to convert data into usable information. In this way, a better understanding of the geology and the mapping of potential areas is obtained,” the company said.

“The better we can do this, the more successful offshore bid rounds will be and the greater the chance of finding hydrocarbons.”

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