Exxon­Mo­bil can drill its first ex­plo­ration well in T&T’s ul­tra-deep­wa­ter TTUD-1 block by late 2027 or ear­ly 2028, as the en­er­gy ma­jor ac­cel­er­ates work on what is be­ing close­ly watched as one of the coun­try’s most sig­nif­i­cant fron­tier ex­plo­ration prospects.

The time­line was out­lined by Exxon­Mo­bil vice pres­i­dent and head of Glob­al Ex­plo­ration John Ardill dur­ing re­marks at the ROG.e en­er­gy con­fer­ence in Rio de Janeiro on Sep­tem­ber 21.

The T&T En­er­gy Cham­ber stat­ed that ac­cord­ing to re­ports on Oil­NOW, cit­ing en­er­gy in­dus­try pub­li­ca­tion Up­stream, the com­pa­ny has al­ready com­plet­ed seis­mic da­ta ac­qui­si­tion on the block and ex­pects processed sub­sur­face im­ages to be avail­able by the end of 2026.

“The da­ta’s in. We’ll see an im­age by the end of the year, and we would ex­pect to be drilling in late ’27, ear­ly ’28,” Ardill said.

He said the TTUD-1 pro­duc­tion-shar­ing agree­ment fol­lowed sev­en months of ne­go­ti­a­tions, point­ing to the pace of con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions and seis­mic work in com­par­ing the pro­gramme with Guyana.

The cham­ber al­so cit­ed that Brazil­ian en­er­gy pub­li­ca­tion Eixos al­so re­port­ed the drilling win­dow and year-end imag­ing tar­get, not­ing that Ardill de­scribed how Exxon­Mo­bil had short­ened time­lines in Guyana by ex­plor­ing, ap­prais­ing reser­voirs and build­ing pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty in par­al­lel.

In a sep­a­rate LinkedIn post, Ardill said in­ter­na­tion­al oil and gas ex­plo­ration was be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly ur­gent as com­pa­nies sought re­sources for fu­ture projects.

He cit­ed Exxon­Mo­bil’s deep­wa­ter de­vel­op­ments in Guyana as an ex­am­ple of how ear­li­er dis­cov­er­ies could be­come pro­duc­ing as­sets.

Ardill added Exxon­Mo­bil was ex­pand­ing its glob­al ex­plo­ration ef­forts and seek­ing to short­en the time be­tween seis­mic ac­qui­si­tion and ex­plorato­ry drilling, not­ing that new tech­nolo­gies, ad­vanced com­put­ing and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence were al­so help­ing the com­pa­ny pur­sue de­vel­op­ment at greater speed and scale.

Ardill cit­ed a fore­cast of around 15 per cent growth in glob­al en­er­gy needs through 2050, dri­ven by pop­u­la­tion growth and eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion, with hy­dro­car­bons con­tin­u­ing to sup­ply more than half of the world’s en­er­gy.

He linked that out­look to the need to dis­cov­er new re­sources.

The TTUD-1 pro­duc­tion-shar­ing con­tract was signed on Au­gust 12 2025.

Five months lat­er, Shear­wa­ter GeoSer­vices an­nounced that Exxon­Mo­bil had con­tract­ed it to car­ry out a 3D seis­mic sur­vey us­ing Ama­zon War­rior.

The planned sur­vey cov­ered ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6,000 square kilo­me­tres of full-fold area.

In its Jan­u­ary 25, 2026 up­date, the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries said the ves­sel was sched­uled to leave Ch­aguara­mas that day.

The min­istry cred­it­ed gov­ern­ment co­or­di­na­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry sup­port with help­ing the pro­gramme ad­vance.

De­spite the faster pace, Ardill cau­tioned that ex­plo­ration suc­cess would de­pend on the ge­ol­o­gy.

“The ge­ol­o­gy has to work for us, same way as it does in any basin,” he said, as re­port­ed by Oil­NOW.