Ecuador plans 2024 offshore gas block tender: Update

Add information on additional tenders.

Ecuador aims to tender production rights in four natural gas-prone offshore blocks in the Gulf of Guayaquil in 2024 after first better surveying reserves, energy ministry Xavier Vera said today.

The ministry of energy will soon hire an outside company to perform reserve studies, which will take 12-18 months, Vera said during the Enaep oil and gas conference.

The blocks to be studies are 4, 5, 39 and 40, manager of special projects for PetroEcuador Jaime Garzon said.

The only offshore field that produces natural gas in Ecuador is Amistad, in block 3 also in the Gulf of Guayaquil. But output from the PetroEcuador-operated field has more than halved to 23mn cf/d from January-August 2022 from 55.9mn cf/d in 2014.

Amistad had 149.1 Bcf in proven reserves as of 31 December 2020, according to PetroEcuador.

PetroEcuador will now relaunch in November a delayed tender to seek an investment partner to boost production in Amistad to 100mn cf/d. A partner would be chosen by August 2023, Garzon said.

The winner would invest about $500mn under a 20-year service-fee deal.

In other offers, about 16 companies have expressed interest in the second round of a tender for production rights to smaller producing areas between larger fields, known as the intercampos round.

The tender includes the six smaller onshore oil blocks 11 and 93-97 — including the Tetete Sur, Saywa, Tamya, VHR Oeste, VHR Este and Lumbaqui fields — in the northeast.

The fields have reserves of 611mn bl of 14-30° API crude in place, with recoverable resources of 108mn bl. The ministry of energy plans to award the contracts by March.

PetroEcuador will also relaunch in the first quarter of 2023 two tenders for partners to increase reserves and output of its highest-producing field, Sacha, and 22 smaller fields divided into five groups, Garzon said. The company had first planned award contracts by December, but will restructure the offer.

The state-owned firm will sign a 20-year service-fee deal with the awarded company that will have to invest $4.5bn in the project to increase Sacha's output to 120,000 b/d from the January-August daily average of 65,082 b/d.

Finally, PetroEcuador will launch the tenders to recover around 52mn cf/d of natural gas from the state-owned fields and reopen 100 closed wells with about $6.35bn in investment by the end of this year, after first planning to award them this year.

By Alberto Araujo