Page 15 - LatAmOil Week 36

LatAmOil COLOMBIA LatAmOil

This is an important consideration for the coun- Unconventional activity could add as much
try, which has not been discovering enough as 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) to the country’s
oil and gas to make up for the depletion of its oil production, according to estimates by the
conventional reserves. Currently, the South Colombian Petroleum Association, known as
American country only has enough oil to last ACP. It could also attract $5bn in annual invest-
for around six years. ment, the industry group says. ™

SURINAME
Stena Drilling wins contract for

exploration drilling at Block 47

ABERDEEN-BASED Stena Drilling revealed 1,900-metre-deep water. Tullow hopes to test
last week that it had won a contract from Tullow two targets within a Cretaceous turbidite play
Oil (UK/Ireland) for drilling services in Suri- that lies upon the flank of the Demerara High.
name’s offshore zone. It has said that the 2,369-square km Block 47
In social media posts, Stena said that the con- may lie in a section of the Atlantic Ocean that
tract provided for Tullow to use the Stena Forth is analogous to the Jubilee field offshore Ghana.
drillship at Block 47 offshore Suriname. It did (Tullow serves as operator of the Jubilee field.)
not divulge the value of the deal, but it did say The company is working with two other part-
that the Stena Forth was due to arrive at Block ners at Block 47. Equity in the project is divided
47 in December 2020 or January 2021. (Ship- 50% to Tullow, 30% to Argentina’s Pluspetrol
ping sources report that the vessel is currently and 20% to Israel’s Ratio Petroleum. ™
anchored at Gibraltar.)
On arrival, the vessel will begin preparations
for a one-well drilling campaign. It is slated to
spud the well in January or February of next
year.
“Stena Drilling are pleased to be the cho-
sen contractor for this work and look forward
to working with Tullow Oil and their partners
again on this exciting opportunity,” the company
said in its social media posts.
According to previous reports, the Stena
Forth will drill GVN-1, the first exploration well
at the Goliathberg-Voltzberg North prospect
within Block 47. Tullow had originally hoped to
spud the well in the fourth quarter of 2020 but
reported in early August that it had pushed the
target date back to the first quarter of 2021.
The GVN-1 well will be sunk at a site
about 260 km north of Suriname’s coast in Açu Petroleo’s terminal has a capacity of 1.2mn bpd (Photo: Açu Petroleo)

BRAZIL
Brazil’s lower house OKs text of gas bill

THE Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of company Petrobras over the energy sector.
Brazil’s National Congress, has greenlighted the More specifically, it would establish a new
basic text of legislation that provides for opening regulatory regime tasking the National Agency
up the country’s natural gas market to more pri- of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP)
vate competition. with authorising new projects.
The bill passed last week in a 351-101 vote. Previously, this was the responsibility of Bra-
If it becomes law, it will further weaken the zil’s government, which maintained a system of
monopoly long held by state-controlled oil concessions.

Week 35 03•September•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P15