Scott Dyksterhuis was convinced. Or as convinced as you can be when predicting what lies more than 3 miles beneath the seabed. The then 32-year-old geoscientist for Exxon Mobil Corp. figured there was a good chance a vast trove of oil lay buried off the coast of Guyana, near where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean Sea. Now came the hard part. He had to persuade his bosses to drill a well that would prove it. “It was high-risk,” Dyksterhuis says. “But Guyana was a casino you wanted to play in because when you win, the profits are so high.”
In late 2013 hunting for oil in Guyana was among Exxon’s lowest priorities. Companies had drilled more than 40 dry holes in the region. The target formation—named Liza, after a local fish—was under a mile of water, and drilling it would cost at least $175 million. Even Dyksterhuis estimated there was only a 1 in 5 chance of success. But if he was right, it would open an oil frontier, proving a theory that the same geology behind Venezuela’s reserves, the world’s largest, extended across the north coast of South America. Many at Exxon had no interest in making that bet. Neither did much of the rest of the oil industry.
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Publish date : 2024-07-31 23:00:00
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