The hottest new prospect for the world’s oil industry is Guyana, a small, relatively poor, country on the north-eastern coast of Latin America. Over the past year, a series of discoveries by ExxonMobil have identified 3.2bn barrels of oil in the Stabroek block around 120 miles offshore. Given Exxon’s traditional caution, the actual reserves could well be significantly higher. Most of the remaining area off the coast of Guyana remains to be explored.