By : Inspenet, Nov 24, 2022
Ecuador is looking to potentially attract foreign investment for the key ITT and Sacha oil blocks in a bid to increase oil production to 600,000 barrels a day by 2025, avoiding a production stagnation, the country’s Energy Minister Fernando Santos said this week. , in a note released by Reuters.
The plan would allow private companies to help increase production at state oil company Petroecuador through specific service provision contracts.
“If we achieve foreign investment in the ITT and in the Sacha, we can reach 600,000 barrels per day by the end of President (Guillermo) Lasso’s term,” Santos said in an interview with Reuters. “If we manage to attract prestigious companies to these two fields, production would increase, otherwise it would stagnate where it is.”
Ecuador’s current production is around 490,000 bpd. ITT and Sacha together produced about 118,000 bpd last Friday, according to official data.
Lasso pledged to increase output to 1 million bpd when he took office in May 2021, but that target has been repeatedly revised amid the sector’s woes.
Santos acknowledged that the ITT, located in the vicinity of the Yasuní ecological reserve, has a limitation imposed by the National Assembly that it can only be operated by the state-owned Petroecuador, but said that with a contract for the provision of specific services, that resolution is not would be affected. Petroecuador will make a decision on the two blocks in the first days of 2023, according to the minister.
Production could increase by an additional 30,000 bpd in 2023 if environmental permits are granted to operate four new drilling rigs in ITT’s Ishpingo field, Santos said.
Photo: ShutterStock
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