Malaysian state oil firm Petronas is due to start drilling offshore Suriname next month, the country's state oil firm says.
Staatsolie says Petronas, with partner DEA, a German company, has lined up the Rowan Company's Ralph Coffman jackup for drilling the Roselle-I well on Block 52 starting early-mid May.
Block 52 cover 4749sq km and is 130km north of the coast of Paramaribo with 50-200m water depth.
Drilling is due to go to a depth of more than 5km, says Staatsolie and take about three months. After drilling, Petronas will decide, on the basis of the results, whether they will carry out phase 2 of the program, which could see a second exploration well drilled.
Staatsolie and Petronas agreed a production sharing contract in April 2013 for exploration and possible production of this Block. Petronas is also active in Block 48, offshore Suriname, and is partner of Apache and Cepsa in Block 53.
Staatsolie says: "Despite the low oil prices, foreign companies continue investing in the Surinamese offshore-area. In 2015 the American oil giant Exxon-Mobil made a large discovery in offshore-Guyana by means of the Liza-1 exploration well.
"With this discovery interest for the Guyana-Suriname basin has increased further. This is the area which covers Guyana, Suriname and part of French-Guiana and shows similarity with, among others, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa.
"The discovery in Liza-1 will increase the insight in the geology of the Guyana–Suriname basin and because of that it is also of great importance for Suriname."
A total of 10 international oil companies are now carrying out exploration activities in the Surinamese offshore area, namely: Petronas, Tullow Oil, Statoil, Apache, Kosmos Energy, Inpex, Cepsa, Chevron, Noble Energy and DEA.
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