Page 8 - LatAmOil Week 04 2020

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This would mark a 23% rise on the previous year’s figure of $4.03bn, the report said.
ACP also projected that more than 80% of total investments would be used to support upstream production. Projects designed to opti- mise output levels are likely to absorb $4.05bn this year, up by about 25% on the 2019 figure, it explained.
Exploration projects are set to draw at least $920mn worth of investments, the group’s report noted. This sum will include $250-260mn for exploration work at offshore fields and more than $110mn for work at unconventional hydrocarbon deposits, it said.
Unconventional projects might proceed slowly, owing to environmental regulations that limit the use of techniques such as hydraulic fracturing (fracking), it added.
Rising investment will help compensate for declining yields at mature oilfields and push production up to 890,000 barrels per day, said Francisco Lloreda, the head of the ACP. With- out the influx of new funds, he said, Colombia might see crude production drop by more than 150,000 bpd from the current level of 886,000 bpd.
“It is a realistic estimate based on the invest- ments that we are talking about,” Lloreda told reporters in Bogota. “If we were not making
these investments this year, production would barely be more than 730,000 barrels a day.”
He went on to say that the pace of exploration at unconventional fields might pick up in 2021. Colombian oil and gas producers are hoping that the government will establish a regulatory regime that covers fracking in 2020, so that it can then start issuing permits and licences allowing work to proceed in the following year.
“[ACP expects] 2021 to be the year that businesses can advance not only their construc- tion works, but also the wells that form part of the pilot projects,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.™
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Peruvian judge seeks ban on oil exploration, development in Amazon
PERU
Fracking projects have drawn criticism in Colombia (Photo: Desde Abajo)
PERUVIAN judicial authorities ordered that oil exploration and exploitation be suspended in a region of the Amazon that has a large indigenous populationlastweek.Thebanwouldapplyinan area where local tribes have long opposed the development of energy projects on their land.
A Peruvian judge ruled last week that the government must exclude the region, which lies near Peru’s border with Brazil, from explo- ration and development, Reuters said, citing a local legal group. The Institute of Legal Defense (IDL) has asked Peru to establish a strict pro- tection zone around the area, the agency added.
The decision follows the filing of a lawsuit in 2017 by the Regional Organisation of Indige- nous Peoples of the East. The group demanded that the national oil company (NOC) Perupetro and the government suspend their permits to work at three blocks in the Loreto region, which is also located in the Amazon.
“This ruling is historic because it is the first in favour of indigenous people in voluntary iso- lation against oil companies,” the report cited
Maritza Quispe, a lawyer for IDL, as saying. “Almost 98% of the territory of the indige- nous people in voluntary isolation was above
threeoillots,”sheadded.
The Peruvian government had been plan-
ning to develop oil zones in the region, in a national park called the Sierra del Divisor park.
It is home to indigenous groups that live in vol- untary isolation. 
Drilling in indigenous areas has sparked protests (Photo: Amazon Watch)
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w w w. N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 04 30•January•2020