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Equinor completes acquisition of stake in Carcara area
NORWAY’S Equinor said last week that it had completed its acquisition of a minority stake in BM-S-8, a block in the Santos Basin o shore Brazil, from Barra Energia.
In a statement, Equinor said it had paid $379m for 10% of the block, which is part of the Carcara area. e state-owned Norwegian company is already serving as operator of an adjacent site, Carcara North, and the trans- action with Barra will allow it to assume the operatorship of BM-S-8 as well. As a result, the deal will “fully align” Equinor’s interests in the Carcara area, the statement said.
e transaction has also allowed Galp, Exx- onMobil and Equinor to complete related trans- actions covering both BM-S-8 and Carcara North. is deal, which was rst announced in July 2018, reduced the Norwegian compa- ny’s share in BM-S-8 from 46.5% to 40% and e ected the transfer of a 3.5% stake to Exxon- Mobil and 3% to Galp. It also names Equinor as the operator of the combined project and sets
its stake at 40%, with the remaining equity split between ExxonMobil with 40% and Galp with 20%.
Carcara holds signi cant volumes of hydro- carbons, with reserves totaling around 2 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Equinor has said it intends to develop both sections of the pre-salt area as a single unit, with rst production slated to occur in mid-2024.
It already holds a license for exploration drilling and intends to expand the license to cover development drilling.
Earlier this year, the Norwegian company said that the partners intended to install two FPSO-type production platforms at the Car- cara area. e units will be able to extract up to 220,000 barrels per day of crude oil and 15 million cubic metres per day of natural gas. ey will support a production system of 32 wells, including 12 development wells, 12 con- tingency wells, four gas-injection wells and four water-injection wells. ™
Equinor said in “
a statement that
the deal would “fully align” its interests in the Carcara area
Brazil’s Amazonas state to offer Rosneft tax breaks for Solimoes Basin project
THE state-owned Russian oil company Rosne is set to secure tax incentives for a natural gas project in Brazil’s Solimoes Basin.
In a statement published last week, Rosne said that the government of the Brazilian state of Amazonas had pledged to take the steps necessary to support its work in the Solimoes Basin. Rosne holds licenses for 13 blocks in the region and hopes to extract natural gas there. e sites cover an area of 32,600 square km, and a report from the DeGolyer & Mac- Naughton consultancy puts their contingent reserves at 60 billion cubic metres. (Prospective gas reserves are nearly three times as large, at 176 bcm.)
e Russian company said in its statement that its fully-owned subsidiary Rosne Brazil had signed a letter of intent (LoI) with the Ama- zonas administration. This letter designates Rosne ’s operations in the Solimoes Basin as a priority project
e LoI calls for local authorities to provide several di erent types of support for Rosne ’s
operations in the Solimoes Basin, Reuters reported.
e document mentions that participants in the project will receive help in the form of envi- ronmental licensing, state backing for the estab- lishment of new infrastructure and a favourable tax regime.
Rosneft did not say whether the parties had already reached agreement on the details of tax breaks for the Solimoes Basin project. It did indicate, though, that it expected its assets in the area would yield enough fuel to support gasi cation initiatives in Brazil.Additionally, it stated that the 13 blocks contained other types of hydrocarbons – namely, 57 million tonnes of crude oil and gas condensate.
e Russian company has held a majority stake in the Solimoes Basin elds since 2013. In November of that year, it struck an agree- ment with HRT, a Brazilian company, on the acquisition of a 6% stake in the 13 blocks. is purchase brought its interest in the project up to 51%. ™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 25 26•June•2019