PARIS/PARAMARIBO – On Tuesday, TotalEnergies (NYSE: TTE), the French oil major, will sign a final investment decision (FID) on a more than $10 billion offshore oil and gas development in Suriname, the country’s first, according to four sources with knowledge of the project.
Located in Block 58 some 140 kilometers offshore the South American country, the Gran Morgu field is estimated to hold about 700 million barrels of oil of recoverable resources and lies adjacent to ExxonMobil’s massive 11 billion barrel find in neighboring oil hotspot Guyana.
TotalEnergies (NYSE: TTE) CEO Patrick Pouyanne will fly to Paramaribo for an FID announcement alongside Surinamese President Chan Santokhi before traveling to New York for the company’s investor day on Wednesday, added the sources, who declined to be identified because the details had not been made public.
Annand Jagesar, the CEO of Suriname’s state-owned energy company and market regulator Staatsolie, said last week that it was “highly likely” Staatsolie would succeed in raising the funds needed to exercise its option to buy a 20% stake in the project, which is currently split 50-50 between operator TotalEnergies and the Texas-based APA.
Staatsolie and APA declined to comment.
Staatsolie has estimated Suriname’s oil and gas resources could bring in between $16 billion and $26 billion — dwarfing the country’s $4.34 billion GDP.
The first oil on Gran Morgu is targeted for early 2028 using a floating production, storage, and offloading vessel capable of processing 200,000 barrels of oil per day.
For TotalEnergies, the Suriname project is part of its strategy to focus on low-cost, low-emissions upstream oil projects.
The oil will be able to be produced for under $20 per barrel, Pouyanne has said, while respecting the company’s emissions cap of 18 kg of CO2-equivalent per barrel of oil equivalent on new projects.
Earlier this year, TotalEnergies took FIDs on offshore fields in Angola and Brazil and is pursuing the development of major discoveries in Namibia.
(Source: ReutersReuters)
