Page 17 - LatAmOil Week 39

LatAmOil BRAZIL LatAmOil

The news agency also noted that a company focus on upstream operations in the deepwa-
based in the US state of Florida had also pleaded ter pre-salt area. Last December, the firm said
guilty to bribery as a part of the Car Wash probe. it hoped to sell off $20-30bn worth of assets in
The firm had been accused of making improper the 2020-2024 period as part of this initiative. ™
payments to officials at Brazilian state-run oil
company Petrobras, it said.
Brazil’s ongoing Car Wash corruption
scandal, the country’s largest-ever corruption
investigation, entered its 74th phase earlier
this month with a probe into foreign-exchange
transactions carried out by Petrobras around a
decade ago. Federal police in Brazil issued 25
search warrants as part of the new probe and
Banco Paulista, a São Paulo-based financial
firm, is also being investigated.
Petrobras is trying to pay down debt and
recover from the Car Wash scandal, through a
strategy based on divesting non-core assets to Vitol says it has anti-corruption policies in place (Photo: File)

ARGENTINA
Echo Energy mulls micro-LNG

project at Monte Aymond field

US-BASED Echo Energy is looking into the Aymond in 1984. During initial testing, the well
possibility of launching a micro-LNG initiative yielded 2.4mn cubic feet (67,960 cubic metres)
in Argentina. per day of gas and condensate. It then went into
In a statement, the company said it had production for about 10 months, during which
begun work on a feasibility study for the com- period output averaged around 5 mmcf (141,590
pression and liquefaction of natural gas from cubic metres) per day but was abandoned.
Monte Aymond, a field within the Palermo Aike Echo is now hoping to bring the field back
block in Santa Cruz Province. It indicated that online. “Whilst this well was previously aban-
the project would involve the construction of a doned, the company believes that the now
small-scale LNG plant at the field. Production improved local infrastructure and prevailing gas
from this facility could be loaded onto trucks for prices mean Monte Aymond is now an exciting
distribution within Argentina, it said. commercial project,” the company said. ™
The scheme “would increase the company’s
ability to sell gas directly to clients in remote
areas via truck transportation (a virtual pipe-
line) with the potential to achieve materially
higher sales prices,” Echo said in its statement.
The company did not reveal how much the
micro-LNG initiative might cost or when it
expected to complete the feasibility study. But
it did say that it was looking at an alternative
plan for gas from Monte Aymond. Specifically,
it explained that it was considering a proposal
to establish a link between the field and Campo
Limite, another gas-producing site about 5 km
away.
Campo Limite also lies within the Palermo
Aike licence area, Echo noted. As such, the
company could “[aggregate] the volumes of
Campo Limite and Monte Aymond via a hub
development approach to potentially lower
development costs and [to] increase the returns
from both projects and also a standalone devel-
opment,” the statement said.
Gas was originally discovered at Monte Echo’s fields are in the Austral basin (Image: Echo Energy)

Week 39 01•October•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P17