Page 12 - LatAmOil Week 06 2021

LatAmOil PERU LatAmOil

Petroperú issues debt for refinery upgrade

PETROPERÚ, the national oil and gas operator International Petroleum Company. As such,
of Peru, launched a bond issue worth $1bn last Petroperú is eager to move forward with the
week in a bid to raise funds for the modernisa- modernisation project, which has entailed the
tion of the Talara oil refinery. construction of several new facilities – including
In a filing with local regulatory authorities, a flexicoking unit, the first of its kind in Latin
Petroperú reported that the bonds were due to America.
mature in 2047. It also noted that the securities The upgrade will also increase the capacity of
carried a 4.65% coupon, which it described as a the refinery from 62,000 barrels per day (bpd)
“historic low.” by 50% to 95,000 bpd. The project was already
“The transaction was carried out through more than 90% complete as of last December,
the re-opening of the bond maturing in 2047 at but it was running behind schedule. Petroperú
an interest rate of 4.65%, which represents the had said previously that it hoped to finish work
minimum historical interest rate for Petroperú,” in 2017. ™
it wrote in the filing.
Additionally, it noted that the securities issue
had been oversubscribed, attracting around
$2.5bn worth of offers. This “reflects the con-
fidence of the market in the [Talara refinery
upgrade] project,” it commented.
This marks the second time that the Peruvian
operator has sold its securities on the interna-
tional market. It did so for the first time in 2017,
when it put $2bn worth of bonds up for sale.
Talara is Peru’s second-largest oil refin-
ery. The plant is located 1,185 km away from
the capital Lima on the Pacific coast in the far
northern part of the country. It still uses equip-
ment that was installed in the 1950s by the US The Talara refinery is more than 60 years old (Photo: Grupo Cobra)

ECUADOR
OCP plans new bypass pipeline

HEAVY Crude Pipeline (OCP), the operator of triggered landslides that damaged its network
a private oil pipeline system in Ecuador, is set to and caused oil spills.
build a new bypass to prevent stoppages due to OCP was not the only company that
storms and natural disasters. incurred damages as a result of the landslides.
The company unveiled plans for the bypass Government-owned PetroEcuador also had to
on February 4, shortly after a landslide occurred halt shipments through its Trans-Ecuadorian
in the vicinity of its pipeline. It did not say Oil Pipeline System (SOTE), which can handle
whether this incident had affected the flow of up to 360,000 bpd of crude oil. ™
crude through its system, which has a design
capacity of 180,000 barrels per day (bpd), but it
stated that the construction of the bypass would
not interrupt shipments.
It also said that the new section of pipe would
be 500 metres long and would cost about $1mn
to build. Work on the bypass should take around
15 days to complete, it added.
This is not the first bypass line OCP has built.
The company has already spent approximately
$19mn on the construction of new pipe sec-
tions and other measures designed to minimise
environmental hazards. In April of last year, it
was forced to suspend operations after storms OCP is privately owned (Image: Ecuador Ministry of Hydrocarbons)

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 06 11•February•2021