Colombia could become a major oil producer
"Today, the world's only five or six countries have a growing oil production, Colombia is one of them. Instead, the others are in decline," said John Francis Scott, director of the Canadian company Petrominerales one of the 10 that in recent years began operations in the country.
"That increase boosts the services industry in a country of great potential and a tax system encouraging," said the executive on Thursday during a conference on energy in the Andes in Bogotá.
Colombia's oil production has increased in recent years from an average of 588,000 b / d 2008-930500 b / d in June, official figures show.
That way it ranks as the third largest producer in South America behind Brazil and Venezuela and Ecuador before. Ronald Pantin, former director of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and current director of the Canadian Pacific Rubiales said that "Colombia is the most important thing in this business: prospectivity."
The manager of PDVSA said that "In Colombia there are a lot of oil, clear rules, a government favorable to foreign investment and good workers," who said that his company has a 83 percent rate of success in exploration."These factors added a very experienced group of Venezuelan oil," he added, referring to the dozens of former workers of PDVSA now play in Ecopetrol and other private companies operating in Colombia.
For this executive, Colombia's oil promise is based on the geological characteristics common with neighboring Venezuela, the country's largest oil reserves in the world. "When we arrived in Venezuela, with the experience of the oil of the Orinoco Belt, we came here looking for Gaza, so we went straight to the Rubiales field (in the department of Meta)," Pantin said, referring to the huge reservoir Venezuela of 55,314 square kilometers, with 220,000 million barrels of extra heavy oil.
"Geologically, the Orinoco Belt is an area that starts in Venezuela and extends in Colombia Arauca to Meta and then west to area Caguán (Caquetá) and Ecuador," he said.According to Pantin, Colombia has increased its oil production in recent years "because this country had been explored very little, because the insecurity they had. Rubiales field in which we operate today, for example, was burned completely in 1999 by guerrilla major new findings were made in areas that had not been explored before, "he added.
Given these projections, the government of Colombia has set a goal of reaching a production of 1,150,000 b / d by 2014, and since last year considered a tax system applied as a stimulant for the oil and gas. "In 2010 we opened a major offer round for areas with petroleum potential. This raised a tax regime with royalties of between 8 and 15 percent, depending on the size of the deposit," said oil expert Amilcar Acosta.
It also established a fee of between 1.63 and superficial $ 4.88 per hectare (0.81 per hectare for offshore operations), and set a reference price of $ 35 a barrel to exceed what that number is shared between the National Hydrocarbons Agency state and the company that operates the concession.
In 2010, the average cost of producing a barrel of oil to Ecopetrol was $ 14.05 and $ 74 fine. Ecopetrol produces over 700,000 b / d, equivalent to 75 per cent of the country.
