Page 13 - LatAmOil Week 19 2020
P. 13
LatAmOil COLOMBIA LatAmOil
The company said it had begun discussions with privately owned companies in the hope of gain- ing access to additional onshore storage facili- ties in Colombia and was also considering the option of using Suezmax tankers or very large crude carriers (VLCCs) as floating storage. It also stated that it was conducting a systematic review of various storage options in other coun- tries, mostly in the Caribbean Sea region, but
did not elaborate.
Bayon has also indicated that Ecopetrol is
ready to use its own infrastructure networks in order to optimise its storage capacity. During a conference call on the company’s first-quarter performance, he said: “In March, we began the process of strategic storage in our crude oil and infrastructure network to ensure [the] opera- tional continuity of our production.”
ECUADOR
Ecuador restarts loadings after OCP repair
Ecuador was due to restart oil loadings earlier this week, as the Heavy Crude Pipeline (OCP) has been repaired following damage last month.
The first cargo containing 480,000 barrels of oil was scheduled to be loaded at Esmeraldas, a port on the country’s Pacific coast, on May 11, OCP said in a statement. Esmeraldas is due to lift a total of 4mn barrels of crude by the end of May, it added.
The pipeline company also said it was ready to transport 1.2mn barrels of stored crude from its Amazonas station.
The OCP link is privately-owned by Spain’s Repsol, China’s Andes Petroleum, the US inde- pendent Occidental, Argentina’s Pampa Energy and the Anglo-French independent Perenco. When fully operational, it pumps an average of 173,086 barrels per day (bpd), according to government data.
The pipeline has been shut down since mid- April, when landslides in the Amazon region damaged the system. OCP said last week that it had repaired a broken section of pipe by con- structing a 1.7-km bypass line, mostly under- ground, in the area where the rupture took place.
The landslides also forced the shutdown of SOTE, a state-run pipeline that pumps an aver- age of 340,165 bpd along a 498-km route from the Amazon region to Esmeraldas.
The SOTE system experienced a drop in pressure following episodes of extreme weather
and mud flows. State-owned PetroEcuador said last week, though, that this pipeline network had also been repaired and had resumed nor- mal operations.
Ecuador, a former OPEC member, has seen oil production levels drop in recent weeks, partly because of the damage to the two pipe- line networks but also because of a major slide in fuel demand on the back of the coronavi- rus (COVID-19) pandemic. The country’s oil regulator ARCH has reported that crude out- put averaged 182,353 bpd in April, down by approximately 65% on the first-quarter figure of 521,927 bpd.
The OCP system has resumed operations (Image: Ecuador Hydrocarbons Ministry)
GUYANA
Hess reports on development plans for Stabroek block
US-BASED Hess has commented on plans for continuing the development of Stabroek, an oil-bearing block offshore Guyana.
In its first-quarter earnings statement, which
was released last week, Hess said that Guy- ana’s second floating production, storage and off-loading (FPSO) vessel was still on track to start pumping oil in 2022.
Week 19 14•May•2020 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m
P13
