TotalEnergies and its partners remain on schedule to bring first output from the US$12 billion GranMorgu offshore oil and gas project online by mid-2028, Staatsolie head Annand Jagesar said Saturday during a site tour in Paramaribo, with roughly half of the planned investment already spent.

The project, developed jointly by TotalEnergies, Suriname’s state oil company Staatsolie and APA Corp, sits in Block 58, a 1.4-million-acre offshore area directly adjacent to ExxonMobil’s Stabroek block in neighbouring Guyana. TotalEnergies chairman Patrick Pouyanne confirmed the spending milestone at the same event, according to Reuters. Wellhead components, tubing hangers and other equipment manufactured in Malaysia are due for installation shortly, part of the subsea architecture that will carry oil and gas back to a floating production platform.

GranMorgu will mark Suriname’s first offshore oil and gas production despite years of exploration success in its waters. Wood Mackenzie estimated in 2024 that the country’s discovered resources exceed 2.4 billion barrels of oil and liquids and more than 12.5 trillion cubic feet of gas, but none of that has yet reached commercial output. “Together, we are not only developing an energy project, but we are also writing a new chapter in Suriname’s history,” Jagesar said at the event.

Jagesar also signalled interest in expanding the block’s footprint beyond the current development. TotalEnergies is scheduled to drill four exploratory wells in Block 58 next year, and Jagesar said he hopes those wells could support a second floating production, storage and offloading vessel in the block down the line.

The project’s trajectory mirrors Guyana’s own path to oil production, though on a compressed timeline: ExxonMobil brought first Stabroek output online in under four years from sanction, and ships GranMorgu is aiming for a similar window from its 2024 final investment decision. If the mid-2028 target holds, Suriname would become the Caribbean Basin’s second new major oil producer within roughly half a decade of Guyana’s, giving the region a second fast-growing source of offshore hydrocarbon revenue and investment at a moment when Guyana’s own output and fiscal receipts are still climbing.

The 50 per cent investment mark also suggests the project has passed its most capital-intensive early phase without a disclosed cost overrun or delay, a detail regional investors are likely to weigh against Guyana’s early development experience, where schedule slippage was rare but cost growth on later phases was not.