Page 17 - LatAmOil Week 37

LatAmOil BRAZIL LatAmOil

The bank also said last week that its forex desk in the deepwater pre-salt area.
was “extinct” and that its current management Last December, Petrobras said the list of
was unaware of the object of the probe, it added. assets slated for sale included eight Brazilian
For its part, Petrobras said in a statement that refineries.
it had “actively collaborated with the authorities In May, Petrobras’ CEO Roberto Castello
in the probe and provided information that Branco said he did not believe there was less
resulted in [this] operation.” It also reported demand among potential buyers for the firm’s
that it was conducting internal investigations of assets in spite of the coronavirus (COVID-19)
the matter. pandemic. He also declared that he did not
The search warrants were executed within believe recent market developments would
the framework of the 74th phase of Brazil’s affect the prices of the eight refineries the firm
ongoing Lava Jato (“Car Wash”) investigation, is selling.
which was launched in response to the country’s Meanwhile, the Rio de Janeiro-based firm
largest-ever corruption scandal. has taken other measures to compensate for the
Petrobras is currently trying to recover from damage it has incurred because of the public
the scandal and pay down its debt, through a health crisis and sliding oil prices. For exam-
strategy based on divesting $20-30bn worth of ple, it has delayed a dividend payment and has
non-core assets in 2020-2024 and focusing on reduced investments this year by nearly a third
upstream exploration and development projects to $8.5bn. ™

ARGENTINA
Argentina’s Mendoza Province

studies new contract option

ARGENTINA’S hydrocarbon-rich Mendoza Colombia. This approach can also help gauge
Province, which is home to a section of the Vaca interest in different blocks, he said
Muerta shale play, is looking at a new contract About 40% of Vaca Muerta acreage lies
model. The western province, which is less within Mendoza Province. But Mendoza bor-
developed than other parts of Vaca Muerta, ders Neuquen Province, which has the larg-
hopes this new model will help pull in more est and most productive portion of the shale
investment. formation.
Provincial officials said last week that Men- Vaca Muerta is around the size of Belgium
doza was considering the introduction of a sys- and contains around 308 trillion cubic feet
tem of permanent licensing rounds. The plan (8.722 trillion cubic metres) of shale gas and
is now under review in the western province, 16.2bn barrels of oil, according to the US Energy
which borders the Andes mountain range. Information Administration (EIA). Royal
Mendoza is currently the fourth most pro- Dutch Shell (UK/Netherlands), Total {France},
ductive oil province in Argentina. In June, it ExxonMobil {US), Chevron (US) and a sub-
accounted for 11% of Argentina’s oil production sidiary of BP (UK) are all participating in Vaca
of 472,000 barrels per day (bpd) and 1.9% of its Muerta projects. ™
natural gas output of 126mn cubic metres per
day, according to data from the industry group
Argentina Oil and Gas Institute.
Estanislao Schilardi, oil and gas director of
the provincial government, divulged details of
the plan under discussion in a statement. “The
idea is to create a model with the particular con-
ditions of each block and set a starting date,” he
said. “For example, every three months the enve-
lopes are opened, and the blocks without offers
will remain in the running.”
This new system would replace Mendoza’s
old method of calling auctions periodically for a
set number of blocks and then picking winners
based on the best bid.
Schilardi pointed out that the permanent
licensing round method has already been
shown to work effectively in both Canada and Districts of Mendoza province (Image: Wikimedia)

Week 3 17•September•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P17