Exxon hopes to repeat Guyana's oil boom offshore Trinidad and Tobago

ExxonMobil (XOM) is looking to replicate Guyana's oil and gas boom off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago, the company's head of exploration told the Financial Times in an interview Tuesday.

"A lot of people ask, where's the next Guyana? In Trinidad, we moved in as a play extension to Guyana," Exxon's (XOM) head of global exploration John Ardill told FT.

Development in Trinidad is occurring at a much faster pace than in Guyana, Ardill said, noting that Exxon (XOM) negotiated a production-sharing agreement with the government within seven months—"about half as long as it usually takes on a good day"—and secured a vessel to begin acquiring seismic data for a prospect in just six months, compared to the year usually needed to complete the process.

Trinidad's crude output peaked in the late 1970s and has fallen steadily ever since, and a revival could ease the strain on the country's finances, which have been hit by shortages of liquefied natural gas feedstocks in recent years.

Ardill said Exxon (XOM) will make a decision on where to drill its first well by mid-2027, and "if we are successful with that well, we can deploy the Guyana development model—which is extremely fast—and we also have the AI tools developed in Guyana."

Exxon (XOM) is looking to apply the techniques it has used in the U.S. to other shale-rich areas around the world and has brought delegations from Azerbaijan and Algeria to the Permian Basin to demonstrate how the company operates such projects, Ardill told FT.

"The big exploration play is to take what we've developed in the Permian and replicate itsomewhere like Azerbaijan or Algeria," Ardill said. "Azerbaijan would be an oil play, Algeria is a gas play, but these are huge, absolutely world-class."