GUYANA | Exxon's $6.8 Billion Bet: Hammerhead Project Extends Guyana's Historic Oil Boom

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, September 23, 2025 - From Jamaica's "live oil" discoveries brought to attention by local fishermen to Suriname's recently discovered deposits set to begin production in 2028, the Caribbean is experiencing an unprecedented resource rush.

In the last eight years, two of the Caribbean Community's largest and most resource-rich countries—Guyana and Suriname—have found extremely large deposits of offshore oil and gas, setting the stage for massive economic transformation that could reshape the region's economic destiny.

Even Barbados, with decades of modest 1,600-barrel daily production from inland wells, now hints at "highly regarded prospectivity" in its offshore waters.

But it's Guyana that has emerged as the crown jewel of this Caribbean transformation. What began with a single exploratory well in 2015 has cascaded into the most dramatic economic metamorphosis in the region's modern history, catapulting the former British colony from South America's poorest nation to its fastest-growing economy.

The latest chapter in this remarkable story arrived Monday with ExxonMobil's approval of the $6.8 billion Hammerhead project—the seventh development in the prolific Stabroek Block.

The Hammerhead decision represents more than just another oil field coming online. Scheduled for first oil in Q2 2029, the project will deploy a floating production storage and offloading vessel capable of producing 150,000 barrels daily, pushing Guyana's total production capacity toward an unprecedented 1.5 million barrels per day by decade's end.

Critically, associated gas from Hammerhead will feed directly into Guyana's ambitious gas-to-energy infrastructure—a $2 billion initiative designed to slash electricity costs and reduce the nation's carbon footprint even as it becomes a major hydrocarbon producer.

The project's 20-year operational timeline underscores the long-term confidence that ExxonMobil, Chevron (30% partner), and China's CNOOC (25% partner) place in what has become the Western Hemisphere's most significant oil discovery in over two decades.

Historical Context: The Stabroek Miracle

The genesis of Guyana's transformation traces back to a calculated gamble that defied decades of exploration disappointment. ExxonMobil initiated oil and gas exploration activities in Guyana in 2008, collecting and evaluating substantial 3-D seismic data across a marine territory that had frustrated previous operators.

When the company safely drilled its first exploration well in 2015, Liza-1, few anticipated the scale of what lay beneath 5,719 feet of Atlantic Ocean water.

The Liza discovery was announced in May 2015. Liza-1 well was the first significant oil find offshore Guyana. It encountered more than 295 feet (90 meters) of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs—a find that would trigger the most aggressive deepwater development campaign in industry history.

The amount was so large, the crude so light and so cheap to produce, that an international consortium led by U.S. supermajor ExxonMobil broke all records by rushing into actual production by the end of 2019, less than five years after the first discovery.

What followed was a masterclass in systematic exploration. Since oil production started in 2019, Liza 1, Liza 2, and Payara have accelerated production to over 600,000 barrels per day.

The Stabroek Block consortium—ExxonMobil (45% operator), Chevron (30%), and China's CNOOC (25%)—has methodically unlocked more than 30 additional offshore oil and natural gas discoveries within the Stabroek block since that initial breakthrough.

Current estimates place recoverable reserves at 11.6 billion barrels of oil, positioning the 6.6 million-acre block as one of the most prolific deepwater discoveries in petroleum history.

Economic Transformation

The numbers speak to a transformation almost without precedent in modern economic history. GDP per capita increased from one of the lowest in South America, from US$6,477 in 2019 to over US$18,199 in 2022—a nearly threefold increase in just three years.

In 2022, Guyana's GDP grew by 62.3%, the highest real GDP growth in the world that year, according to the International Monetary Fund. By 2024, oil revenues jumped from $1.62 billion in 2023 to $2.57 billion in 2024—a near 60% increase.

Since first production in 2019, more than US $5.4 billion in oil revenues and royalties have been paid into the Guyana Natural Resource Fund, creating a sovereign wealth buffer that has grown to over $3.1 billion.

Currently, the block's partners plan for the combined production capacity to reach approximately 1.3 million b/d by the end of 2027, with plans to develop three additional projects: Yellowtail, Uaru, and Whiptail.

If realized, the increased production would make Guyana the second-largest crude oil producer in Central America and South America behind Brazil.

Caribbean/Regional Perspective

Guyana's success has triggered a regional scramble for similar discoveries. The Guyana oil shout and mutterings that the country could be the Dubai of the Caribbean in a decade have led to a mad scramble by other Caricom bloc member nations to attract exploration investment. Yet this windfall comes with geopolitical complications.

Exploration operations in the Stabroek block and nearby offshore blocks may be affected by Venezuela's claim of sovereignty over the Essequibo region, which accounts for more than two-thirds of Guyana's land area.

In March 2025, a Venezuelan patrol ship entered Guyanese waters and made radio contact with ExxonMobil floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessels in the Stabroek Block, warning that they were "operating in the exclusive economic zone of Venezuela", underscoring the tensions that shadow Caribbean resource development.

For the broader region, Guyana's trajectory offers both inspiration and cautionary lessons about managing sudden resource wealth in small-state democracies.

The Hammerhead project, with its integration into gas-to-energy infrastructure and focus on long-term sustainability, may provide a template for how other Caribbean nations can navigate their own resource discoveries responsibly.

-30-