This site contains geological and geophysical information, required for a better understanding of the hydrocarbon exploration potential of  Suriname-Guyana Basin

Figure 1.

The Suriname-Guyana Basin is a sedimentary basin encompassing the coastal area of French Guyane, Suriname, Guyana and the eastern part of Venezuela (Antillian Arch) (Figure 1.). This Basin extends offshore where the sediment package becomes thicker as the basin grows deeper. The southern limit is the outcrop of the crystalline Proterozoic basement, the Guiana Shield.The Suriname-Guyana Basin is characterized by the presence of a world-class source rock of Cenomanian-Turonian ages. Oil is produced from two fields: the Tambaredjo and Calcutta oil-fields onshore Suriname, with respectively 900 and 150 million bls in place. The fields currently produce 12,000 bopd. Staatsolie Maatschappij Suriname N.V.(Staatsolie), is the Sole Operator of these fields. Exploration activities outside the Calcutta and Tambaredjo Fields onshore as well as offshore have been limited. Recent regional studies, covering the entire onshore and offshore area, have demonstrated that both onshore and offshore Suriname has a significant potential for additional oil and to a lesser extent gas.

Most of the onshore wells date from the eighties onwards, except for the western onshore, where drilling started in 1941. Although most wells had oil and gas shows, no commercial quantities of hydrocarbons were found outside the Staatsolie heartland, mainly due to lack of structure and/or trap. To date 22 exploration wells have been drilled offshore; an area of approximately 150,000 km2. Most of the wells have oil and gas shows. The deeper shelf wells have been drilled in the late sixties and the seventies, with Tertiary/Cretaceous shelf carbonates as main objective. The wells near the coast have been drilled during the eighties.

Oil has also been discovered in the Takutu basin (1981), a graben straddling the boundary of Guyana and Brazil. The Takutu graben is the southernmost extension of an early Jurassic rift valley, which preceded the drift phase of Africa and North America. Note the Demerara High, which is a remnant of the West African Continental crust.

The onshore prospective area covers about 12,000 km2.