When Exxon Mobil chairman Darren Woods attended a January White House conference on investing in Venezuela, he was blunt.
Venezuela was “not investable,” he told President Donald Trump, who was annoyed by the remark.
The Maduro regime’s rules and laws offered little incentive to invest in the country, Woods said. Exxon had had its operations nationalized by the Venezuelan government — not once but twice. Plus, he conceded, Exxon had basically written Venezuela off for 20 years. And to do anything in Venezuela would require a solid on-the-ground investigation.
He didn’t mention something else at that meeting — and maybe he didn’t need to mention it:
Exxon didn’t need Venezuela. Because a big piece of Exxon’s future lies less than 700 miles to the east.
About 120 miles off the coast of Guyana.
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A huge and surprising oil find
It’s called the Stabroek Block. It is one of the biggest oil finds anywhere in the world in a long, long time. And Exxon sees the find capable of delivering oil for many years to come.
The discovery has jump-started Guyana’s economy in a major way. Exxon has invested millions in Georgetown, the country’s capital, where it maintains office and staging area for Stabroek activities.
Exxon has been funding expansion of education resources across the country. Exxon’s considerable influence in Washington has helped prevent Venezuela from trying to take more than half of Guyana in a border dispute.
For years, the country, parked in the northeast corner of South America, was among the poorest on the continent. It was known for thick rain forests and remote, gorgeous scenery, ungodly amounts of rain and humidity, not to mention corruption. It was where the Rev. Jim Jones set up his ill-fated Jonestown community in the 1970s.
But in 2015, oil arrived.
How big is Stabroek Block?
Remember that the value of an oil company is derived from at least two factors:
- The revenue and profits from current and expected future operations.
- The size and value of the reserves that it controls. To that we add: The ability of the company to replace the reserves with new reserves over time.
Right now, estimates are that Stabroek Block has about 11 billion oil-equivalent barrels of reserves, and Exxon expects daily production from the region, which was nearing 875,000 barrels a day at the end of 2025, to top 1 million barrels of oil a day before the end of 2026.
It’s still exploring the block, which totals some 6.6 million acres where the Caribbean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. The acreage is roughly the size of Massachusetts.
Moreover, Exxon’s annual report for 2025 notes that two thirds of its global oil-equivalent production is now coming from three places:
- The Permian basin of West Texas and New Mexico.
- Stabroek Block.
- liquid natural gas operations in the Middle East.
This proportion is generally expected to grow, the report says. A new project in the Stabroek Block, called Hammerhead, is slated to go online later this year.
Exxon’s stock price reflects the bullishness about Stabroek as well as the company’s biggest position in the Permian basis. The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran helped boost all energy shares, too. Exxon shares were up 41% in the first quarter after a 2025 gain of just 12%.
They’re off 10% so far in April. That’s partly due to Exxon’s disclosure its liquid natural gas facilities in Qatar were damaged by Iranian attacks. And the war may reduce overall oil-equivalent production by 6% in the first quarter. But first-quarter earnings will be greater than what Exxon reported in the last quarter of 2025.
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Stabroek was a miracle find
For years, oil companies had vainly searched the north and northeast coast of South America for finds like those in Venezuela or those off northeastern Brazil.
One reason for the interest: something one learns in grade school. South America looks like it once had to be part of Africa millions of years ago. There are sizable oil deposits off the coast of Africa. Ergo, there should be deposits off South America.
Companies had drilled more than 40 dry holes off the coast of Guyana and had walked away. Exxon itself was about to give up. But Scott Dyksterhuis, an Exxon geophysicist using massive amounts of data run through Exxon supercomputers, thought a site codenamed Liza located about1,700 feet beneath the ocean surface looked good. Okay, he told his bosses, it was a 1-in-5 chance. Exxon, however reluctantly, agreed to drill but sold stakes in the project to Hess and CNOOK to reduce its risk.
About $225 million was pouring into this one well.
The result was the biggest find in a generation, worth at least $1.1 trillion, maybe a lot more. Suddenly Guyana became a place.
And it offered oil companies oil that’s relatively inexpensive to pump out and to process, and there was more down below. Lots more.
Joaquin Sarmiento / Getty Images
The downsides of a bonanza
Stabroek is not without controversy. There have been spills during the drilling. The poverty in Guyana is still considerable, no matter how much Exxon has spent. Corruption has been part of the culture, and a September election was fought over what to do with the oil.
Guyana has been threatened by Venezuela. Guyana’s neighbor on the west has claimed for more than 100 years that the Essequibo River drainage, which encompasses the western side of Guyana, is really Venezuela. There were real concerns the Maduro government would invade to seize the oil fields. Exxon and the U.S. government were able to get the situation diffused.
The International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, is supposed to decide on the border dispute later this year.
Suriname, to the east, also claims some territory. Once it sent gunboats out to shoo away a Canadian rig.
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