Page 14 - LatAmOil Week 10 2021

LatAmOil ARGENTINA LatAmOil

Additionally, it stated that more than half of all did offer to deliver 2.5 mcm in June, 3 mcm per
gas produced in Argentina in January had come day in July, 3.5 mcm per day in August and 3
from Neuquen Province, which turned out mcm per day in September. Meanwhile, they
62.11 mcm per day, down by 14% y/y. (Uncon- said, Pampa offered 700,000 cubic metres per
ventional gas made up fully 69% of the Neuquen day in June, 900,000 cubic metres per day in July,
figure, according to data released by provincial 1 mcm per day in August and 1 mcm per day in
authorities.) September.
The decline in January represented a contin- These relatively low numbers are worrying,
uation of last year’s downward trend. Argentina given that Argentina had been hoping the auc-
saw gas output slip to 123 mcm per day in 2020, tions would secure 9.51 mcm per day of gas in
down by 8.6% y/y. May, 21 mcm per day in June, 26.05 mcm per
The secretariat’s dataset was made public day in July, 19.12 mcm per day in August and
around the same time that Argentina’s gov- 9.21 mcm per day in September. They raise the
ernment revealed that the response to its sup- prospect that the country will not be able to
plemental auction on February 20 had been obtain enough gas to meet domestic demand
disappointing. According to officials in Buenos during the Southern Hemisphere’s heating sea-
Aires, only two local companies participated son, which is due to begin in May.
in the sale – namely, Tecpetrol, a subsidiary of Even so, the government recently indicated
Argentina’s Techint Group, and Pampa Energía. that it hoped to sign a short-term lease for a
The officials indicated that neither Tecpetrol floating regasification unit (FRU) that could
nor Pampa had offered to supply any gas in the import LNG. It has launched a tender for the
month of May. They also reported that Tecpetrol lease contract, Argus Media said last week. ™

GUYANA
PetroEcuador to drill at ITT block this year

ECUADOR’S national oil company (NOC) then-President Rafael Correa’s effort to secure
PetroEcuador is set to launch a new drilling pro- international funding in exchange for not devel-
gramme later this year in order to raise crude oping the park, which is home to several indig-
oil production levels at the Ishpingo-Tamboco- enous communities, in the Amazon river basin
cha-Tiputini (ITT) fields. stalled. PetroEcuador’s statement quoted Mal-
In a statement dated March 9, PetroEcuador’s donado as saying that the company intended to
general manager, Gonzalo Maldonado, said the continue developing ITT “hand in hand with
company would drill eight wells at Tambococha environmentally responsible policies.”
in 2021 and would then install two additional PetroEcuador accounts for fully 80% of
rigs at Ishpingo so that it could drill 72 more Ecuador’s total oil production. It extracted an
wells in 2022. He indicated that these efforts average of 479,250 bpd of crude in 2020, down
would bring the total number of wells sunk at by 9.5% on the figure reported for 2019. ™
the block up from 168 to 248.
The general manager went on to say that he
expected the ITT block’s yields to average 60,000
barrels per day this year, slightly up from the
year-to-date figure of 59,471 bpd. Production
levels will rise more dramatically in 2022, as
each of the new wells drilled at Ishpingo will be
able to produce 600-3,000 bpd of oil, he added.
Maldonado did not disclose the cost of the
drilling programme. “We’re defining some
budget parameters to continue the drill cam-
paign in 2021 and then in 2022,” he commented.
He also reported that PetroEcuador was
constructing a new processing plant at Tiputini
within the framework of the project. Work on
this facility, which will be able to handle 80,000
bpd, is already 76% complete, he was quoted as
saying in the statement.
The ITT block is located in the Amazon
Oriente basin in eastern Ecuador, within
the highly biodiverse Yasuni National Park.
The NOC began working there in 2016, after The ITT block overlaps with the Yasuni National Park (Image: MAAproject.org)

P14 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 10 11•March•2021