Page 9 - LatAmOil Week 15 2020

LatAmOil ECUADOR LatAmOil
 The OCP rupture resulted in an oil spill near the Coca River, which provides drinking water for the nearby city of El Coca.
The spill is affecting an area that is home to various indigenous communities. Ecuador’s government has responded by setting up con- tainment barriers, while OCP and state-run Petroecuador, which manages SOTE, have deployed six teams across several locations in an effort to contain the spill.
According to government officials, the land- slide also affected a state-run pipeline used to send refined fuels to the domestic market. Repairs to this line and to the SOTE network could take two to three weeks, they said.
Cash-strapped Ecuador, the smallest mem- ber of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), produces around 530,000 bpd of crude. State-run Petroamazonas, a subsidiary of Petroecuador, produces approxi- mately one-third of the total. For its part, Petro- ecuador exports 180,000 bpd of crude. About two-thirds of this amount, or 120,000 bpd, con- sist of Oriente crude, the highest-quality grade the country produces.
Ecuador has South America’s third-largest oil reserves after Venezuela and Brazil. The coun- try’s government depends heavily on hydrocar- bon revenues, as crude is the country’s biggest export.. ™
PERU
Peru LNG reports exports up in March
PERU LNG, the operator of a natural gas liq- uefaction plant and export terminal in Pampa Melchorita, saw export volumes increase year on year in February.
The national oil company (NOC) Perupetro reported last week that the Peru LNG consor- tium had loaded five vessels with 809,192 cubic metres of LNG in March. This represented a rise of around 6.9% on the figure reported in the same month of 2019, when the group exported 756,762 cubic metres of LNG.
Exports also climbed month on month in March. Previously released data show that Peru LNG loaded five vessels with 795,576 cubic metres of LNG in February of this year, mean- ing that volumes went up by around 1.7% on the previous month.
The increase in export volumes is somewhat unexpected, as PeruPetro reported in late March that Peru LNG had stopped loading tankers around the middle of the month. According to the NOC, the consortium filled three tank- ers with LNG in the first half of the month and did not immediately resume loadings after dis- patching the third cargo to China on March 13. (PeruPetro also noted at the same time, though, that production levels were up at Camisea Block
56, which supplies feedstock to the LNG plant.) The Peru LNG consortium has loaded and delivered a total of 567 cargoes of LNG since its launch in June 2010. Of the five cargoes dispatched in March 2020, one went to South
Korea, two to China and two to Japan.
The group was established by US-based Hunt Oil along with three other companies. The part- ners spent $3.8bn to build the Pampa Melcho- rita facility, which includes a 4.45mn tonne per year (tpy) gas liquefaction plant built by Chicago Bridge & Iron Co. (CBI), along with a marine terminal constructed by a consortium known as CDB. (This group includes Italy’s Saipem, Lux-
embourg’s Jan de Nul and Brazil’s Odebrecht.) The Pampa Melchorita LNG complex also includes a storage depot with two 130,000 cubic metre tanks and a 34-inch (860-mm) natural gas pipeline. This pipeline handles gas from fields in the Cusco region that are being developed by YPF, Argentina’s NOC and Repsol of Spain. The link runs for 408 km from Chiquintirca, a town
in the Ayacucho region, to the LNG plant. Equity in the Peru LNG project is divided between Hunt Oil, with 50%; SK Energy (South Korea), 20%; Royal Dutch Shell (UK/Nether-
lands), 20%, and Marubeni (Japan), 10%. ™
Peru LNG loaded five cargoes in March (Photo: Peru LNG)
Week 15 16•April•2020 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P9