Uruguay has released a draft map of four ultra-deepwater and seven shallow-water blocks in the Punta del Este-Atlantic basin that will be on offer in the country’s third oil and gas bid round next year, officials said in Moscow this week, according to the oil and gas site Upstream.
Uruguay will renew the contract for the purchase of Venezuela oil and accept the stake increase of that country in a local bio-fuels corporation during the scheduled visit of President Nicolas Maduro to Montevideo next month; it was announced by the Uruguayan Foreign affairs ministry.
Despite a decade of sustained growth Uruguay's fiscal deficit reached 2.3% of GDP last year, which is an improvement over 2012, when it reached 2.8%, but above the government's target of 2.1%. In money terms this means the budget red was equivalent to 1.154bn dollars, including 350 million dollar losses from government owned companies.
French oil giant Total will be drilling its first well in Uruguay's continental shelf in October 2015, announced the president of the country's oil and gas government owned company ANCAP. Jose Coya also revealed that the company he leads is working on the third Uruguay Round which will implement in the last quarter of next year.
Oil exploration in Uruguay picked up strongly with the arrival of Anglo-Dutch Shell which took over Brazil's Petrobras participation in two offshore blocs according to the country's oil company Ancap Exploration and Production manager Hector de Santa Ana.
French energy giant Total signed on Tuesday a deal with Uruguay’s oil company Ancap to search for oil in the northern counties of Artigas and Salto in an area of 6.200 square kilometres.
Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras approved the sale of the company's stake in two oil prospects in Uruguay's Punta del Oeste Basin to Royal Dutch Shell Plc for 17 million dollars, according to a filing late on Friday. The two prospects are identified as Blocks 3 and 4.
Uruguay and Argentina presidents Jose Mujica and Cristina Fernandez seem to have ironed out differences, at least in public and in the pictures, during the inauguration of a gasoline and diesel de-sulphuring plant in Montevideo, which was financed with Venezuelan funds and Argentine technology.
The Uruguayan government announced the discovery of free hydrocarbons liquids in core samples next to source rocks in the northern county of Salto at a depth of 450 metres, which seems to be similar to another discovery two years ago.
The French oil and gas company Total confirmed that at the beginning of 2015 it will spud its first exploratory well in deep waters of the Uruguayan continental shelf, according to Juan Gomez, one of directors from the country’s fuel company Ancap.