MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay satisfied with oil corporations’ interest in exploring in its maritime shelf

Next March Uruguay will be tendering fifteen off-shore blocks

At least ten first line oil and gas corporations expressed interest in the road show set up by Uruguay in Houston to promote hydrocarbons exploration on its continental shelf, according to one of the Directors of the country’s fuels company Ancap.

“At least sixteen corporations were interested in our presentation and we had interviews with ten of them” said Director Juan Amaro who was responsible for the Uruguayan presentation together with technical staff from Ancap.

Among the corporations interested in the exploration process, seismic surveying and the hydrocarbons exploration and production contracts were Apache, Conoco, British Petroleum, Exxon-Mobil, Cosmos Energy, Murphy Oil, Noble Energy, Repsol and Shell revealed the Uruguayan delegate.

Amaro said that the road-show in Houston promoting the maritime shelf exploration was addressed as a test ground to gauge the ‘real interest’ of corporations in Uruguay’s oil round scheduled for next March when fifteen blocks, covering an area of 100.000 square kilometres will be tendered.

“The presentation and response was far beyond our expectations, we are most satisfied” said Amaro who anticipated that another similar road-show has been planned for next month in Brazil.

Ancap is hopeful and some primary research seem to indicate such as possibility, that the hydrocarbons deposits that Brazil has discovered running parallel along its coastline could have ramifications extending to Uruguay’s Atlantic coastline.