Ecuador plans to award 11 oil projects this year

State-owned Petroecuador plans to award and sign contracts for 11 oil projects this year and another two next January.

The contracts will be under the production sharing model, the Ecuadoran company’s CEO Ítalo Cedeño told a conference with oil businesspeople organized by the Quito chamber of commerce.

The first two projects are due to be awarded in October and are for the reactivation of 100 closed oil wells and the capture of gas that is flared at oilfields in the Amazon.

Petroecuador has more than 1,000 wells that produced around 200b/d each but were closed when oil was at US$15/b, since the priority was wells that produced between 400 and 1,000b/d.

“With the price of a barrel at US$100, it’s a crime for us not to reopen those wells that are so easy to put into production,” said Cedeño.

With the 100 wells, the company's production is expected to increase by some 15,000b/d for estimated investment of US$80mn.

With the gas captured, the aim is to boost production of the Shushufindi gas plant from the current 12.4Mf3/d (million cubic feet a day) to 37.4Mf3/d.

Expressions of interest from private companies for the two projects will be received in August.

In November it is planned to award the Amistad gas field, located in the Gulf of Guayaquil, which will require investment of US$500mn to increase production from the current 25Mf3/d to 100Mf3/d.

According to Petroecuador's schedule, in December the company plans to award the Sacha oilfield, which produces 70,000b/d, the optimization of the Esmeraldas refinery, the Pungarayacu oilfield, and a round involving five offshore oilfields, among others.

In 2023, a pipeline and a project to increase production of block 43, also known as ITT, are due to be put out to tender.