A promising preliminary discovery of potential hydrocarbons off Jamaica’s coast has sparked cautious reactions, with the country’s top energy official urging the public to temper expectations until full exploratory drilling confirms whether commercially viable oil reserves actually exist.
Energy Minister Daryl Vaz shared his measured perspective in a public voice note circulated Thursday, one day after United Oil & Gas Plc, the London-listed energy firm leading exploration efforts, published its latest survey findings from the Walton-Morant offshore licence. While Vaz acknowledged that the initial results mark a positive step forward for Jamaica’s years-long search for domestic energy resources, he emphasized that the current survey only confirmed traces of hydrocarbons, not a full, extractable reserve.
To reach a definitive conclusion, Vaz explained, United Oil & Gas will need to complete a full exploratory drilling operation, a project that will cost an estimated $60 million to $70 million. The company currently plans to raise this capital through farm-out partnerships with major international oil companies, a process that is still ongoing. Only after core samples are pulled from the fully drilled well will stakeholders know for certain whether commercial oil deposits are present, he added.
The breakthrough preliminary findings were first announced Wednesday in an official regulatory update published via the London Stock Exchange’s RNS news service, a primary approved information provider for UK financial markets. United Oil & Gas, which holds high-impact exploration assets in Jamaica and a smaller development project in the North Sea, completed a Seabed Geochemical Exploration (SGE) survey across the Walton-Morant licence earlier this year, collecting 42 piston core samples for laboratory analysis.
According to the company’s official statement, analysis of the samples detected C4 and C5 hydrocarbons — including butanes and pentanes — in a subset of the collected cores. These heavier hydrocarbon compounds are not typically produced by biological processes, meaning their presence strongly suggests a thermogenic origin, the type associated with deep geological oil and gas formations.
United Oil & Gas noted that this new finding adds to a growing body of evidence supporting the existence of an active petroleum system in Jamaica’s offshore waters. Past evidence has included recurring satellite oil slick anomalies, confirmed thermogenic hydrocarbons in samples from existing onshore and offshore wells, documented onshore and offshore oil seeps, and exposed surface outcrops of oil-bearing rock. Petroleum system modeling has also previously indicated that oil-mature source rocks are likely present in the region.
This year’s SGE survey was the first geochemical study of the Walton-Morant licence to incorporate 3D seismic data, multibeam echosounder seabed mapping, and satellite-derived slick anomaly data to optimally position sample collections, a step the company says improved the reliability of its results. Taken together, all existing data points are consistent with an active petroleum system off Jamaica’s coast, the firm concluded.
Moving forward, the new geochemical data will be integrated into the company’s geological models and risk assessment frameworks, while supporting ongoing technical evaluations and ongoing farm-out negotiations with potential industry partners.