Page 7 - LatAmOil Week 39 2019
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“This is an auction for big players, given the volume of oil involved,” he remarked.
Brazil’s government has said it hopes the licence fees alone will generate revenues of BRL106bn ($25bn).
The licensing round will cover four fields: Atapu, Buzio, Itapu and Sepia. All of these sites lie within a section of the Atlantic Ocean where the government gave Petrobras permission to extract up to 5bn barrels of crude in 2010. Petrobras found considerably more than 5bn barrels of oil in the region, so the additional
volumes (estimated at 6-15bn barrels) have remained under state control since then.
Brazil’s government has said repeatedly that it wants to assign the four fields to private inves- tors. But it has not been able to do so quickly, owing to repeated reviews of draft contracts and changes in relevant legislation. Last week, though, Brazilian legislators took action that should remove many of the obstacles to the planned auctions. They also authorised the state to pay Petrobras $9bn in compensation for the loss of the assets in question.
YPFB reports successes
on residential gasification front
All four of the fields included in the bidding round are near the Libra site (Image: BE Petroleum)
BOLIVIA
A Bolivian cabinet official said last week that YPFB, the national oil company (NOC), had madesignificantprogressonresidentialgasifi- cation programmes.
According to Hydrocarbons Minister Luis Alberto Sanchez, YPFB has already built infra- structure networks capable of supplying gas to around 1mn households that are home to 5mn people, or about half of the country’s entire pop- ulation. The company has established 380,000 gas connections in the department of La Paz, enough to cover 65% of residents, he said. It has also set up 200,000 connections in the depart- ment of Santa Cruz, 195,000 in Cochabamba, 70,000 in Oruro, 60,000 in Potosi and 50,000 in Chuquisaca.
These connections serve more than half of all
residents in each of these departments, he stated. He was speaking during an interview broadcast bythestatetelevisionchannel,BoliviaTV.
In the interview, he said most of YPFB’s cur- rent residential customers were receiving gas via pipelines and that most future customers would do the same. Nevertheless, he said, the company is looking into alternative delivery methods for some parts of the country.
In the departments of Beni and Pando, for example, YPFB will deliver LNG by truck, load- ing up containers of the fuel in Santa Cruz for transporting to local regasification facilities, he explained.
The NOC is due to invest a total of $173mn in residential gasification programmes in 2019, Sanchez said.
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