After recording record levels of production in Brazil, with the help of important pre-salt areas, Repsol Sinopec, controlled by the Spanish company Repsol, plans to work on the consolidation of its assets in the coming years, maintaining the extraction between 90 and 100 thousand barrels of oil equivalent day by 2020.
The president of the company, Leonardo Junqueira, highlighted last Friday, that the oil company leveraged its production this year, after beginning extraction of the Lapa field, in the pre-salt of the Santos Basin, at the end of last year.
Repsol Sinopec, a joint venture with China’s Sinopec, is currently one of Petrobras’ main partners in the pre-salt and the country’s third largest oil and gas producer, losing only to the state-owned company and Anglo-Dutch Shell, cccording to data from the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP).
“This level of 90 to 100 thousand boe / day is the level we sought … Our goal is to maintain this level between 2017 and 2020,” said Junqueira, in his office in Rio de Janeiro, in an interview with Reuters Latin American Investment.
“It does not mean that we do not believe (in Brazil), does not mean that we will not invest to grow production, but it means that it is our goal to maintain this level of production in the portfolio.”
With the strategy focused on consolidating the assets of the current portfolio, which is balanced between assets in production, development and exploration, the company also does not plan to participate in the 14th round of bids for exploratory oil blocks, under a concession regime, in September.
The executive said, however, that the auction is more attractive and will have more competition than the 13th Round, which was defined by government officials as disappointing at the time.
An arm of the Spanish company, Repsol Exploración, for its part, is registered for the 14th Round. However, Junqueira preferred not to comment on the strategy of another Repsol group company in Brazil.
Regarding the pre-salt auctions, scheduled for October, the executive said that there has not yet been a definitive decision and that Repsol Sinopec has monitored the news on the subject and awaits the final publication of the announcement.
In addition to 2020, the company has robust plans involving the start-up of non-oil natural gas production in the BM-C-33 block in the Campos Basin, which contains three promising discoveries called Pão de Açúcar, Gávea and Seat.
According to Junqueira, production in the region is likely to start sometime between 2023 and 2025.
However, to define the production plans in the region, the company relies on the progress of the regulatory reforms put in place by the government to attract investment in the natural gas sector.
“The Pão de Açúcar project will allow a robust growth in production and will probably exceed well over 100,000 barrels (of equivalent oil per day),” said Junqueira.
In the short term, however, the consortium responsible for BM-C-33 should request to postpone the deadline for the ANP Declaration of Commerciality, currently planned for 2018, as a way to get more time to align strategies for the business.
Repsol Sinopec owns 35 percent of the BM-C-33 block. Another 35 percent of the block is with the Norwegian company Statoil (operator of the asset) and the remainder is from Petrobras.
Reuters Summit
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