Page 16 - LatAmOil Week 46

LatAmOil VENEZUEL A LatAmOil

Chevron has already pledged to abide by the hand responsibility for oil-related matters in
terms of its waiver. Venezuela over to the administration of Presi-
On November 17, Ray Fohr, a spokesman for dent-elect Joe Biden, who is due to take office in
the US-based major, said in a statement: “Chev- late January 2021.
ron will continue to comply with applicable laws The incumbent administration, led by US
and regulations in relation to the activities that President Donald Trump, has tightened sanc-
it is authorised to undertake in Venezuela. We tions on Venezuela’s socialist government in a
remain committed to the integrity of our joint bid to unseat the South American state’s presi-
venture assets, the safety and well-being of our dent, Nicolas Maduro. Trump has voiced sup-
employees and their families, and the company’s port for opposition leader Juan Guaido, who
social and humanitarian programmes during assumed the position of interim president in
these challenging times.” early 2019 after claiming that Maduro had used
Neither Chevron nor OFAC commented on fraudulent means to ensure his re-election. The
the reasons for the extension or indicated that US sanctions regime applies to Venezuela’s gov-
any changes were being made to the terms of ernment and also to the national oil company
General Licence 8G. Several industry observ- (NOC) PdVSA, which is the country’s main
ers noted, though, that this decision served to source of revenue. ™

GUYANA
Westmount: Kaieteur oil find won’t

support stand-alone development

AIM-LISTED Westmount Energy, an indirect
shareholder in the Kaieteur block offshore Guy-
ana, has confirmed reports of a new oil discov-
ery in the Tanager section of the licence area.
In a press release dated November 17, West-
mount said that the US super-major Exxon-
Mobil and its partners in the project had found
crude oil in Tanager-1. It also stated, though,
that the discovery was not large enough to be
commercially viable as a stand-alone develop-
ment. As a result, it said, “[it] is anticipated that
the well will now be plugged and abandoned in
the coming days.”
Tanager-1 is the deepest well drilled to date
in the Guyana-Suriname basin. ExxonMobil Kaieteur, a deepwater block, lies to the north of Stabroek (Image: Hess)
and its partners spudded the well on August 11
and used the Stena Carron drillship to sink it to confirm the continuance of a Cretaceous petro-
a total depth of 7,633 metres. leum system and the Liza play fairway onto the
After evaluating LWD, sampling data and Kaieteur block, down-dip from the prolific dis-
wireline data, the group has confirmed the coveries on the neighbouring ExxonMobil-op-
presence of 16 metres of net crude oil pay in erated Stabroek block,” it explained.
sandstone reservoirs within the Maastrichtian Under these circumstances, ExxonMo-
layer. Preliminary fluid evaluations indicate, bil and the other members of the consortium
though, that the oil is heavier than that found in intend to take a closer look at the data from
Liza-1, the first producing field at ExxonMobil’s Tanager-1 before planning their next steps, the
Stabroek block. press release said. They will conduct a detailed
The company stressed in its press release that evaluation “with a view to understanding the
no final decisions had been made about the fate well result, re-calibrating the seismic model for
of the Kaieteur project on the basis of results this part of the basin and high-grading the next
from Tanager-1, especially since other layers potential drilling targets on the Kaieteur block,”
may be more promising. it said.
“Although high-quality reservoirs were also The group has already built up a “substantial”
encountered at the deeper Santonian and Turo- inventory of prospective drilling sites on the
nian intervals, interpretation of the reservoir flu- basis of 5,750 square km of 3D seismic data col-
ids is reported to be equivocal at this stage and lected from the southern portion of the licence
requires further analysis ... The Tanager-1 results area in 2017, the firm added.

P16 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 46 19•November•2020