MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil, Colombia, Peru in Amazon jungle oil exploration

Oil camp in th jungle

Government oil corporations from Brazil, Colombia and Peru signed Thursday an agreement in Lima to jointly invest in the exploration and production of hydrocarbons in the Peruvian Amazon.

The three corporations, PetroPeru, Ecopetrol and Petrobras will hold an equal share of the undertaking beginning with exploration tasks in an area of 5.7 million hectares in the Peruvian jungle to the north of the country next to Colombia. Javier Gutierrez Ecopetrol CEO said at the ceremony he was proud that the first overseas incursion of Colombia's oil company was in neighboring Peru together with other regional companies. Petrobras will be the operator and responsible for assessing the hydrocarbons potential of the Amazon basin in Peru. Peru has extensive gas resources in the south which are being exploited and Colombia also has oil and coal. Petroperu is Peru's leading corporation and is involved in upstream and downstream operations and its main competitor in the country is Repsol-YPF