After a series of major offshore oil discoveries since 2015, with the largest ever made earlier this year, the tiny South American country of Guyana has become a hotspot for international oil majors. The deeply impoverished former British colony’s oil potential is being compared to nearby Brazil and that country’s prolific pre-salt oil fields. By February 2020, another oil discovery by Exxon in the Starbroek block lifted the global integrated energy major’s recoverable resource estimate to 8 billion barrels. If that assessment translates into oil reserves, it will catapult the impoverished South American country into an exclusive global club comprised of the top-20 countries by oil reserves. This highlights the considerable oil wealth possessed by Guyana and its population of 800,000 people. Those discoveries sparked an investment frenzy as foreign oil majors and smaller upstream explorers scrambled to acquire interests in various offshore oil blocks in Guyana. It is […]