Page 9 - LatAmOil Week 05 2020
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According to the technical study referenced by Duncan, Talos’ licence area contains an esti- mated 60% of the reservoir discovered by the company, while the remaining 40% lies within Pemex’s Asab block.
Pemex has long been eager to claim a share of Zama, and it has joined the Mexican Energy Ministry in negotiations with Talos. e par- ties have been in talks for about a year, but they have not been able to reach agreement on oper- atorship of Zama or on how to divide future production.
e NOC has argued that it ought to serve as operator of the eld. Romero reiterated this line of argument last week, saying that putting Pemex in charge would be the most e cient
solution.
He asserted that Zama ought to be developed
in tandem with Asab and two other nearby pros- pects, Naquita and Chamak, both of which are under Pemex’s control. Together, he said, these elds could “constitute a development cluster that we’re looking to create that will slash oper- ating costs by a lot.”
Pemex can launch production in the area more quickly than Talos, he added. “We think Asab can enter into production next year. ey are thinking production won’t happen [at Zama] until 2024,” he said.
Talos is probably sceptical of these claims, given Pemex has repeatedly delayed the drilling of its rst exploration well at Asab.
Ecuador to call tender for gas imports
ECUADOR is going to call an international ten- der this year in an e ort to import around 90mn cubic feet (2.55mn cubic metres) per day of nat- ural gas from private companies for a period of at least four years.
Juan Carlos Bermeo, the country’s deputy hydrocarbons minister, said that the tender would be launched in the rst four months of 2020. He also stated that the government was currently working on setting the rules for the bidding contest, according to the local daily El Universo. e company that wins the tender will receive payments denominated in US dollars, the deputy minister said.
e winner will also have to build the infra- structure needed to import the gas. As such, bid- ders will have to submit proposals for that part of the project as well, despite the fact that the government has not said exactly where it wants the new infrastructure to be built.
Ecuador hopes to name the winner and then award the contract in the second half of the year. Construction will then take around six months, meaning that the rst gas shipments are due to begin in 2021.
Bermeo said that the bidding contest was likely to be similar to one that will be launched by the government for the construction of a new re nery, called the Re nería de la Costa. at re nery tender is expected to allow interested companies to choose the geographical location and the capacity of the plant and also decide how much to invest in the new facility.
Amistad is currently the only gas-producing eld in Ecuador. e government has estimated that the mature eld will only be able to remain in production for around four years. is poses a challenge for the country, since the site supplies gas to the 130-MW Machala thermal power plant (TPP).
e eld is located around 60km o shore in the Gulf of Guayaquil, in the Paci c Ocean. It was discovered in 1970 but did not start produc- ing until more than three decades later, in 2002. At that time, a unit of the independent US-based company Noble Energy started it up.
In 2010, Ecuador’s state-run Petroamazonas assumed operatorship of the eld. It did so a er Noble refused to switch its production-sharing contract (PSC) for a service agreement.
ECUADOR
COLOMBIA
Ecopetrol joins gas flaring initiative
COLOMBIA’S state-owned oil and gas com- pany Ecopetrol has joined a World Bank-led global initiative to stop routine gas aring at its operations.
e initiative, called “Zero Routine Flaring by 2030,” has as its aim the elimination of rou- tine aring of associated gas in new and existing
elds within a decade. Flaring is the practice of burning gas found during oil extraction.
Companies that sign on to the scheme must commit to reporting the volume of gas ared each year to the Global Gas Flaring Reduction (GGFR) partnership, which supports the e orts of countries to reduce gas aring and venting.
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