Caribbean Market Snapshot
Following a number of successive oil & gas discoveries across the region, the Caribbean has gained prominence on the global hydrocarbon map and can be foreseen as the next major oil & gas producing region in the world in coming years. With the rapid developments and expedited activities in the region’s oil and gas sector, many Caribbean nations have garnered the interest from some of the world’s largest oil & gas companies seeking to capitalise the untapped market potential and the huge business opportunities available in the region’s upstream, midstream and downstream value chain.
The Caribbean region was earlier characterised as consisting of small fragmented economies driven by tourism, offshore financial services, commodity-based agriculture, with limited opportunities for mineral extraction. However, this has started to change rapidly, making the Caribbean region globally significant as a major source of hydrocarbons in the western hemisphere. Many Caribbean nations like Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname, Jamaica, Barbados, etc are going through transition in constituting the World’s next major oil & gas hotspot.
The Caribbean region has become a centre of global dialogue since the first major oil discovery offshore Guyana in 2015 and there has been a constant rise in the number of discoveries ever since. Guyana so far has announced 20 commercial oil discoveries and possesses an estimate of over 9 billion barrels of recoverable light crude oil, thereby gaining prominence on the global Oil & Gas map. Suriname on the other side is on its journey to become another oil & gas province in the region with 6 high-potential Oil & Gas discoveries made so far. Moreover, recent discoveries in the Guyana-Suriname basin alone attest to estimates of over 18 Bbbl of oil resources and more than 30 Tcf of gas.
Another oil-rich Caribbean nation, Trinidad & Tobago has prospective oil reserves of 200 million barrels and natural gas deposits totalling 11trn standard cu feet (scf), presenting numerous business opportunities in country rich energy potential. Also, the small island nation of Barbados produces both crude oil and natural gas and holds more than 1.98 million barrels of proven oil reserves and produces more than 1K barrels of crude oil per day. Moreover, An independent evaluation of Prospective Resources offshore Jamaica prepared by Gaffney Cline & Associates (Gaffney Cline) show that there is potential for more than 2.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent across 11 prospects and leads covering the Walton Morant licence granted to a UK based company, United Oil & Gas in 2020 by the Jamaican Government.
The governments of the Caribbean region are striving hard to advance their local content and position their oil & gas potential at the forefront in light of the huge oil reserves. Many foreign companies have started to invest in exploration and are investing billions of dollars to unlock the incredible opportunities available in the region's ever-expanding oil & gas sector.