Page 8 - LatAmOil Week 42 2019

LatAmOil ECUADOR LatAmOil
Ecuador resumes oil exports
ECUADOR’S national oil company (NOC) Petroecuador resumed normal crude export operations on October 20.
In a statement, Ecuador’s Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources said the company was once again exporting oil via the network known as the Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline System (SOTE). e NOC has pledged to deliver all of the volumes it was unable to send to buyers a er declaring force majeure on Octo- ber 9, it noted.
”Petroecuador li ed the force majeure clause today, on October 20, and thus resumed crude oil exports. is decision was taken once oil pro- duction had recovered and the operation of the Trans-Ecuadorian Oil Pipeline System (SOTE) normalised,“ the statement said. ”All exports that were suspended will be rescheduled in the coming days to comply with all the obligations that the company maintains.”
Pablo Flores, the NOC’s general manager, added that Petroecuador’s staff had worked to minimise the impact of the halt in produc- tion. “During the emergency that the country experienced, the company did not neglect any of its commitments, either nationally or
internationally,” he said.
Flores was speaking the day before the Min-
istry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources said oil production levels were mov- ing back up to previous levels and now stood at 527,459 barrels per day, with 426,401 bpd coming from the NOC and 101,057 bpd from private operators. Ecuador’s crude output typ- ically averages about 540,000-545,000 bpd, and the country lost about 1.5mn barrels as a result of recent unrest.
e NOC declared force majeure a er pro- tests against the government’s decision to li subsidies on motor fuel spread from the cities to oil-producing areas. Street demonstrations began on October 3, and by October 7, pro- testers began attacking production facilities and damaging oil infrastructure. ese actions disrupted about two thirds of the country’s total crude output, and Petroecuador responded by suspending operations at 20 or more elds and putting exports on hold.
Petroamazonas, a state-owned company that is in the process of merging with Petroecuador, has said that it sustained about $48.4mn worth of damage during the demonstrations. ™
GUYANA
Guyana not ready to decide on disposal of future oil production
A Guyanese o cial indicated last week that the government had not yet made any nal deci- sions about how to dispose of its share of future crude oil production.
Mark Bynoe, the director of the Depart- ment of Energy, said that Georgetown’s main goal was to ensure that Guyanese oil was sold at for a price that yielded the most bene ts. e country intends to sell crude with the intention of ensuring the “maximum value for the people of Guyana,” he told Stabroek News.
e Department of Energy will take an inter- est in “any investment that is feasible and will optimise the bene ts for Guyanese [citizens],” the minister added. He stressed, though, that his agency was not committed to any particular plan yet.
Bynoe was responding to a question about whether the government might set aside some of its oil from o shore elds for processing in a small modular re nery that Turhane Doerga, a Guyanese businessman, intends to build near Linden. Doerga’s company, GuyEnergy, hopes to complete the oil-processing plant sometime
next year.
Earlier this month, the businessman told
Stabroek News that his re nery would have an initial throughput capacity of about 4,000 bar- rels per day. By the end of the rst phase of oper- ations, he said, the plant will be able to handle 10,000 bpd of oil.
Doerga has estimated the cost of his re nery at around $100mn, comparing it favourably to a larger-scale scheme that the Guyanese govern- ment has considered. He has also argued that a small modular plant is likely to be more e cient than a larger facility.
Georgetown has been looking into the pos- sibility of building a conventional oil-process- ing plant with a throughput capacity of around 120,000 bpd. According to Stabroek News, Har- tree Partners, a global merchant commodities rm, estimated the cost of Georgetown’s plan for a 120,000 bpd oil-processing plant at around $5bn. Hartree also expressed doubts about the economic viability of such an undertaking in its feasibility study of the project, the newspaper said. ™
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