Page 16 - LatAmOil Week 43 2020

LatAmOil BRAZIL LatAmOil

“In relation to the FPSO charter assignment, is already home to six production wells, three
Karoon does not consider that this will delay water-injection wells, and one gas-injection
transaction close,” it added. (This is in line with well that are being used to exploit two reservoirs.
a statement the company made earlier this All of the wells are subsea completions with tie-
month, saying: “The FPSO charter assignment ins back to the Cidade de Itajaí FPSO, which is
has also progressed, and Karoon expects the owned by the Norwegian-Brazilian joint ven-
documentation associated with this assignment ture TeekayOcyan. ™
to be finalised and ready for execution after ANP
approval is received.”)
The Baúna field is located in a shallow-wa-
ter section of the southern Santos basin, one of
Brazil’s largest hydrocarbon provinces. It lies
within a licence area known as BM-S-40, which
is around 50 km from Karoon’s Neon and Goiá
discoveries and 50 km from its Clorita explora-
tion area.
The Australian firm agreed to buy a 100%
stake in the field from Petrobras in July 2019 for
around $665mn. It then received environmental
permits for the project in August of this year.
The Baúna field, which started operations in
February 2013, registered an output in July 2020
of about 16,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil. It Baúna is located in a shallow-water section of the Santos basin (Image: Karoon)

Petrobras to assume control

of Foz do Amazonas block

BRAZIL’S National Agency of Petroleum, Nat- reluctant to take this step because of concerns
ural Gas and Biofuels (ANP) reported last week about the environmental risks of drilling in the
that it had authorised state-owned Petrobras to sensitive Amazon Delta region. Greenpeace and
assume control of FZA-M-59, a block in the Foz other environmental groups have opposed such
do Amazonas Basin. efforts since the discovery of coral formations off
On October 22, the agency said it had given the coast of Amapá State in 2016.
Petrobras a green light to take over as operator IBAMA, for its part, says it has not permitted
of the block. FZA-M-59 was originally oper- drilling to go forward because Total and its part-
ated jointly by BP (UK) and Total (France), ners have not met requirements with respect to
which won the right to negotiate a contract in environmental impact studies.
2013, during Brazil’s 11th licensing round. Total
announced last month, though, that it intended
to transfer its stakes in five Foz do Amazonas
blocks to its partners.
Since then, Petrobras has been lobbying BP
to forego its portion of Total’s stake in FZA-M-
59. Thus far, the UK-based super-major not said
whether it would exercise or waive its option to
acquire additional equity. However, a spokes-
man for the company told S&P Global Platts
earlier this week that BP had agreed to hand the
operatorship over to its Brazilian partner. When
asked for more information, the spokesman
declined to comment about how equity in the
block might be distributed in the future.
Total opted to quit FZA-M-59 and the other
Foz do Amazonas blocks because it has not
been able to secure drilling permits for seven
new wells from Brazil’s federal environmental
regulator IBAMA. The state agency has been The licence areas are close to coral reefs discovered in 2016 (Image: Greenpeace)

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