- State oil company to drill in Yuralpa, Auca, Shushufindi fields
- Petroecuador’s Auca fields producing 74,980 b/d
- Oilfields operating at 99% capacity after SOTE restart
By Alex Emery / Platts
QUITO
EnergiesNet.com 01 26 2022
State oil company Petroecuador plans to drill a total of 33 wells in its largest oilfields this year, part of the government’s goal to double the country’s crude oil production, CEO Italo Cedeno said Jan. 24
The company will drill 12 wells in the Shushufindi fields, 11 in Auca and 10 in Yuralpa, all in the Amazon jungle Napo Basin, Cedeno said in a statement.
“It’s our obligation to optimize the fields,” Cedeno said after visiting the fields. “We have to take advantage of the high oil prices.Auca is currently producing 74,980 b/d, followed by Shushufindi (58,807 b/d) and the Yuralpa block’s Coca-Payamino field (12,667 b/d), the company said.
Petroecuador’s oilfields are operating at 99% of capacity after restarting the 360,000 b/d SOTE oil pipeline, according to the company. The SOTE conduit reopened Dec. 30 after a three-week shutdown due to flooding.
Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso, a former banker who began his four-year mandate in May 2021, seeks to award Petroeduador’s refineries, oilfields and pipelines as private concessions this year in a bid to boost Ecuador’s oil production to 1 million b/d.
Barring dramatic changes, S&P Global Platts Analytics projects Ecuador’s crude production to grow from about 502,000 b/d in 2021 to more than 590,000 b/d by 2030.
Ecuador was producing 493,700 b/d of crude through Jan. 20, according to the ministry. Petroecuador accounts for about 80% of the country’s output.
The Jan. 24 announcement followed news last week that Canadian oil company Frontera Energy made the first oil find in Ecuador in six years.
The Jandaya-1 well was drilled to a depth of 10,975 feet and is expected to start long-term testing next month, Calgary-based Frontera said in a statement. The Perico oil and gas field, a joint venture with GeoPark, will see a second well (Tui-1) drilled in February, according to Frontera.
spglobal.com 01 24 2022