Page 15 - LatAmOil Week 48 2020

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This budget provides for the consortium to arranged to assign its stake to a partnership it
spend about $5mn in the second half of the year has established with Qatar Petroleum, and “gov-
on the reprocessing of existing 3D seismic data ernment approval [for this plan] is expected
in light of positive drilling results from nearby imminently,” the statement said.
acreage and on the “high-grading of target selec- According to an updated competent person’s
tion,” it said. report (CPR) issued by Gustavson Associates
It also stated that it remained “fully earlier this year, Orinduik’s gross prospective
funded” for its share of costs from the drilling resources amount to 5.141bn barrels of oil
programme. equivalent. This is up from the figure of 3.981bn
To date, Eco Atlantic and the other share- boe cited in the previous version of the CPR,
holders in Orinduik have made two non-com- which was completed in March 2019.. ™
mercial discoveries of heavy oil at Orinduik.
Nevertheless, Tullow Oil (UK/Ireland), the
operator of the block, has remained optimistic
about the group’s chances of discovering light
sweet crude – especially because light crude has
been discovered in Carapa-1, a well sunk at the
neighbouring Kanuku block.
Tullow is a minority shareholder in Kanuku,
where Spain’s Repsol is serving as operator. The
block lies south of Orinduik, which is itself 11
km up-dip from Guyana’s first producing oil-
field – Liza, located within the Stabroek block.
Equity in the Orinduik consortium is divided
between Tullow, with 60%; Total (France), with
25%, and Eco Atlantic, with 15%. Total has The group has already made two non-commercial finds (Image: Eco Atlantic)

BRAZIL
Petrobras slashes five-year

investment budget by 27%

BRAZILIAN oil and gas giant Petrobras has cut from its debt portfolio by 2022. It has already
its five-year investment budget by more than experienced some successes on this front, as it
one quarter to $55bn. reduced gross debts by $31bn between Janu-
The state-owned company said in a state- ary 2019 and September 2020, “even with the
ment last week that it had decided to slash its impacts of COVID-19 and the oil shock in
planned expenditures by 27% over the next 2020,” the statement noted.
year. It explained this decision by pointing to
the decline in global energy demand and prices
that have followed the coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic.
The Rio de Janeiro-based company also
said that it expected to devote 84% of its five-
year investment budget, or $46bn, to oil and
gas exploration and production. Of the $46bn
expenditure on exploration and production,
approximately 70%, or $32bn, will be directed
to assets in the offshore pre-salt zone.
“This allocation is adherent to our strategic
positioning, focusing on world-class assets in
deep and ultra-deep waters,” the company said.
Between 2021 and 2025, a total of 13 new pro-
duction systems are due to begin operating at
deepwater and ultra-deepwater sites, it added.
Petrobras has said it intends to focus on
deepwater oilfields in pre-salt areas, while also
selling non-core assets in order to trim $60bn The group has already made two non-commercial finds (Image: Eco Atlantic)

Week 48 03•December•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P15