Page 9 - LatAmOil Week 35 2021

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He also indicated that Washington would a socialist who is widely believed to have used
not overlook reports of the deal. “We do not fraudulent means to secure re-election in late
preview our sanctions, but of course evasion 2018, to step down.
schemes may prove vulnerable to sanctions,” he The US is traditionally the Latin American
remarked. country’s principal market for crude exports, so
As of press time, PdVSA had not commented PdVSA’s revenues have suffered as a result of the
on the matter. sanctions.
The Trump administration began impos- Meanwhile, the impact of these trade restric-
ing strict, sweeping sanctions on PdVSA and tions has been compounded by the coronavi-
the Venezuelan oil industry in January 2019. It rus (COVID-19) pandemic, which brought
did so in a bid to constrain the country’s abil- global oil prices down in 2020 and undermined
ity to export oil and to put pressure on Maduro, demand for energy. ™

GUYANA
ExxonMobil spuds Sapote-1 well at Canje

ESSO Exploration & Production Guyana Ltd next year,” he said. “We are entering a very busy
(EEPGL), a subsidiary of ExxonMobil (US), has period of drilling and updating drilling plans,
spudded the Sapote-1 exploration well at the and we look forward to updating the market in
Canje block offshore Guyana. the coming months on our progress of the Orin-
According to a statement from Canada’s Eco duik block and on the Sapote-1 results.”
(Atlantic) Oil & Gas, a non-operating partner Equity in the Canje project is split between
in the project, EEPGL began drilling the well EEPGL, the operator, with 35%; TotalEnergies
earlier this week. The US super-major is using E&P Guyana, a subsidiary of TotalEnergies,
the Stena DrillMAX, a drillship owned by Swe- with 35%; JHI Associates, a Canadian com-
den’s Stena Group, to sink the shaft at a site that pany in which Eco Atlantic owns a 6.4% stake,
lies about 225 north-east of Guyana’s capital city with 17.5%; and Canada’s Mid-Atlantic Oil &
Georgetown in 2,550-metre-deep water. It is Gas, with 12.5%. The partners finished drilling
expected to finish drilling Sapote-1 in approx- another exploration well, Jabillo-1, at Canje ear-
imately 60 days. lier this year but did not find commercial hydro-
In its statement, Eco Atlantic said that the carbon reserves there. ™
exploration well was “designed to test Upper
Cretaceous reservoirs in a stratigraphic trap.”
The partners are upbeat about their chances of
success, as the drilling site is about 50 km north
of Haimara, a discovery at the neighbouring
Stabroek block (also operated by ExxonMobil)
that encountered 63 metres of gas condensate
in a sandstone reservoir, it said. Sapote-1 is also
60 km north-west of Maka Central, a discovery
made at Block 58 offshore Suriname (operated
by France’s TotalEnergies) that encountered
around 50 metres of high-quality crude oil in a
sandstone reservoir, it noted.
Gil Holzman, the president and CEO of Eco
Atlantic, expressed optimism about the drilling
programme. “With other drilling targets in the
region having yielded significant discoveries,
now totalling billions of barrels of oil and oil
equivalent, we are excited about the potential of
the Sapote-1 well and look forward to receiving
the well results in due course,” he said.
Holzman also drew attention to his compa-
ny’s other projects in Guyana’s offshore zone.
“We also are keen to deliver additional drilling
success with our next exploration campaign [at]
our neighbouring Orinduik block in the [Guy-
ana-Suriname] basin and the follow-through
potential of ExxonMobil’s recently announced
multiple well pre-permitting on the Canje block Canje is adjacent to the Stabroek block and Block 58 (Image: JHI Associates)

Week 35 02•September•2021 www. NEWSBASE .com P9