Page 8 - LatAmOil Week 09 2020

LatAmOil COLOMBIA LatAmOil
 Development plans
Bayon was speaking shortly after unveiling the company’s plan to expand exploration drilling this year.
During a conference call with investors in late February, he said that Ecopetrol wanted to see the number of wells drilled each year rise to as much as 45 by 2022. In 2019, he noted, the company drilled a total of 20 wells, exceeding its goal of 12. Those wells had a 40% success rate, he added.
“Last year, we had a lot of success in the bid- ding process for [exploration and production] areas, [so] we will keep working on that,” he noted. “We are working on having an inventory of potential exploration prospects that is much greater than [the yearly goal of] 30. It could be 40 or 45 wells [by 2022].”
The state-owned Colombian firm posted a net profit of COP13.3tn ($3.84bn) in 2019, respresenting a 14.7% rise on the previous year.
It has attributed that increase to its commercial strategy for heavy crude production.
Ecopetrol’s heavy crude oil assets are focused on the Cubarral Block located in the Orinoquia region, which includes the Castilla and Chi- chimene fields. Outside Colombia, the NOC has stakes in fields in Peru and Brazil and on the US Gulf Coast.
The CEO said that the company’s plan for the 2020-2022 period was to focus on its assets in Colombia, as well as international wells that have good prospects. “We will not be cautious from the point of view of exploration,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Bayon went on to say that Ecopetrol’s reserve replacement figures had climbed to 169% last year. This is the highest figure reported in the last nine years, he noted, declaring that the increase had stemmed from a combination of explora- tion and better recovery of crude from mature wells. ™
GUYANA
Guyana searching for oil marketing agent
THE government of Guyana has launched a search for a company that will market its share of oil from an oil-bearing offshore block that a consortium led by US super-major ExxonMobil brought on stream last December.
Georgetown is entitled to a share of the oil produced at the Liza well, so it is seeking a mar- keting agent to help it export the crude. The government said in a statement last week that the agent would be responsible for lifting around five cargoes of around 1mn barrels each within a one-year period.
According to the statement, Guyana’s Department of Energy is seeking bids from com- panies that have at least five years of experience in oil marketing and trading. The department has already begun taking questions from inter- ested parties and is due to publish its responses on its website by March 7.
Officials in Georgetown have said, though, that the Department of Energy would not hold any face-to-face meetings with representatives of companies that are considering a bid for the contract.
Instead, they have instructed firms that wish to participate to submit expression of interests (EoIs) by March 12.
The announcement came shortly before Guyana held its presidential election as sched- uled on March 2. The outcome of the vote, which was still being counted as of press time, will have an impact on the South America state’s nascent oil sector, as the opposition People’s Pro- gressive Party has pledged to review all oil con- tracts signed under incumbent President David Granger’s government if it wins.
Last year, Guyana started to sell its share of oil from ExxonMobil’s Stabroek block via open-market tenders, since it has no refining capacity. The first cargo of crude from the Liza field was sold to Royal Dutch Shell.
Guyana is one of Latin America’s poorest countries, and it has no experience of oil pro- duction. It has seen its fortunes turn around after awarding multiple blocks to ExxonMobil in 1999. The US company, which is working at Stabroek via a consortium that also includes China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) and the US independent Hess, has made 15 dis- coveries at the block to date.
So far, it has found more than 8bn barrels of oil and gas at Stabroek. The block will eventually produce around 750,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude by 2025.™
Stabroek lies in Guyana’s offshore zone (Image: Hess)
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Week 09 05•March•2020