Latin America ///
Schlumberger announced today an award to Subsea Integration Alliance of an exclusive contract by Equinor for the front-end engineering design (FEED) on its Bacalhau (formerly Carcará) project offshore Brazil.
The Maka Central-1 well successfully tested for the presence of hydrocarbons in multiple stacked targets in the upper Cretaceous-aged Campanian and Santonian intervals and encountered both oil and gas condensate.
Under the agreement, Apache and Total will each hold a 50% working interest in Block 58, which comprises approximately 1.4 MM acres in water depths ranging from less than 100 m to more than 2,100 m.
Apache Corp. tumbled after the company’s update on a closely watched exploratory oil well off the coast of Suriname offered little indication as to whether it will be commercially viable.
Natural gas exploration by global oil companies in Bolivia, key to growing the country’s sagging economy, has stopped amid an escalating political crisis that has left the Andean nation rudderless.
Argentina’s domestic natural gas production has been rising steadily in the past three years, largely because of increasing production from the Neuquén basin’s Vaca Muerta shale and tight gas play.
Stopping the flow of Venezuelan oil to its ally Cuba might prove harder than the U.S. expected.
Mexico’s moratorium on auctioning off its oil riches to foreign producers is giving a leg up to nearby rivals Brazil and Guyana.
Change at the top of Wintershall Dea in Brazil: Valerie Bosse is the new managing director of the Wintershall Dea Business Unit Brazil and is responsible for all previous Wintershall and DEA activities in the country.
William (Bill) Head, Contributing Editor
Rebound seen in new offshore exploration
Okra Energy marks a significant milestone with the production and delivery of more than three million gallons of LNG produced by its proprietary technology at its small-scale natural gas liquefaction facility, the first in Perú.
Equinor and Barra Energia have completed their transaction announced on July 4, 2018, whereby Equinor has acquired Barra's 10% interest in the BM-S-8 block in Brazil's Santos basin for a total consideration of $379 million.
The government of the Brazilian state of Amazonas assigned the priority status to Rosneft’s project in the Solimões basin.
Petrobras has made its biggest discovery in the Sergipe since the pre-salt in 2006. Of six fields, it expects to extract 20 MMcmd of natural gas, equivalent to a third of the total Brazilian production.
Libra Consortium has announced the final investment decision to contract the Mero-2 floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel to be deployed at Mero field offshore Santos basin in Brazil.
SBM Offshore has announced that it has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI), together with Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. (Petrobras), for a 22.5 years lease and operate of FPSO Mero 2, to be deployed at Mero field in the Santos basin offshore Brazil, 180 km offshore Rio de Janeiro.
Kurt Abraham, World Oil
U.S. EIA sees continued woes for Venezuelan oil output
Chevron Corp. is lobbying the U.S. for sanctions relief so it can continue doing business in oil-rich Venezuela where President Donald Trump has been pushing for regime change.
Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. - Petrobras reports that its board of directors, at a meeting recently, elected Mr. Roberto Furian Ardenghy for the position of chief institutional relations ffficer.
There is room to discuss postponement of at least one oil and gas auction in 2019.