Page 15 - LatAmOil Week 31

LatAmOil SURINAME LatAmOil

Details emerging about Tullow, Petronas

plans for drilling offshore Suriname

DETAILS have emerged about plans by two Suriname. The Malaysian firm will use the rig
international oil companies (IOCs) to drill in to drill one well, Sloanea-1, within the Sloanea
Suriname’s offshore zone. section of its licence area. It will also have the
One of the IOCs, Tullow Oil (UK/Ireland), option to extend the lease to cover the drilling
revealed last week that it had revised its schedule of a second well.
for exploration drilling at the licence area known In a recent statement, Maersk Drilling put
as Block 47. In an operational update, the com- the value of the contract at $20.4mn. It reported
pany said it still intended to drill GVN-1, its first that Petronas would lease the Maersk Developer
well at the Goliathberg-Voltzberg North pros- for a period of 75 days and begin work in the
pect within the block. It explained, though, that third or fourth quarter of this year. The rig is
the target date for the spudding of the well had “currently warm-stacked in Aruba after ending
been pushed back to the first quarter of 2021. its latest contract offshore Trinidad and Tobago,”
Tullow had said earlier this year that it hoped the statement said.
to drill the well in the fourth quarter of 2020. It Petronas is working with ExxonMobil (US)
has not commented on the reason for the delay, at Block 52. Equity in the project is split 50:50
but it did state last week that it expected to con- between the Malaysian firm and its US partner,
tract a rig for the project in the near future. which is already active in the offshore zone of
The GVN-1 well will be sunk at a site about neighbouring Guyana. ™
260 km north of Suriname’s coast, lying in
1,900-metre-deep water. Tullow hopes to test
two targets within a Cretaceous turbidite play
that lies upon the flank of the Demerara High. It
has said that the 2,369-square km Block 47 may
lie in a section of the Atlantic Ocean that is anal-
ogous to the Jubilee field offshore Ghana.
The company is working with Argentina’s
Pluspetrol at the block. Equity in the project is
split 70% to Tullow and 30% to Pluspetrol.
Another IOC, Petronas (Malaysia), has
reportedly signed a contract with Maersk
Drilling (Denmark) for the lease of the Maersk
Developer rig for work at Block 52 offshore Petronas will use the Maersk Developer at Block 52 (Photo: Maersk Drilling)

ARUBA
Aruba’s search for new refinery

investor draws dozens of bids

ARUBA has reportedly received several dozen facilities, according to Argus Media. Meanwhile,
offers in a two-tiered bidding process offering the second-tier contract, which covers plans to
investors the right to operate the San Nicolas build new facilities at available sites within the
refinery, a 235,000 barrel per day (bpd) facility same 3.75-square km property, drew 25 bids
formerly owned by Valero, or to establish new from 44 registrants.
industrial facilities on the same site. As of press time, RdA had not publicly iden-
Some 29 of the 44 registered companies sub- tified all of the potential investors. But Argus
mitted 29 bids to Refineria di Aruba (RdA), the Media said three companies – the Indian con-
government-owned operator of the oil-process- glomerate Essar, the Venezuelan engineering
ing plant, for the first-tier contract covering the company Inelectra and the Swiss engineering
lease, operation and modernisation of existing firm Litwin – had bid on both contracts.

Week 31 06•August•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P15