RE: Upstream Online1 May 2024 18:19
This is why it's important.
An announcement made by the Argentine government in early July 2023 has focused attention on offshore activities. Equinor and partners have been granted permission to drill the country's first offshore ultra-deepwater well, Argerich-1, in the Argentina Basin's CAN-100 block. Most of the country's hydrocarbon exploration is concentrated onshore (with both conventional and unconventional plays), and in shallow shelf waters of the Austral and Malvinas basins. The Argerich-1 new-field wildcat well (NFW), in a water depth of over 1,500 m, will test a new exploration frontier.
The high expectations rest for Argerich are founded largely on the recent deepwater exploration success in Namibia's Orange subbasin, where Venus, Graff, and Jonker were discovered. The discovery of more than 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of recoverable resources in the last two years in the south region of the African conjugate margin has reignited interest in the southern Atlantic coastal margin. Over the last four years, international oil companies and independents have built interesting positions in the Argentina, Colorado and Pelotas basins in Argentina and Uruguay. TotalEnergies, Shell, and QatarEnergy have all had success in southern Namibia's deepwater and are currently present in the Latin America Atlantic coast basins.
The Argerich-1 NFW is operated by Equinor in partnership with Shell and YPF and planned for the end of 2023. It is considered to be a high-impact well (HIW) with potential resources estimated at 1,100 million boe. The target is expected to be the Cretaceous basin floor fan sandstones, similar to those found in the Namibian discoveries, that remains untested in the Latin American Atlantic margin. TotalEnergies drilled a NFW in late 2016, the Raya-1 well, in deepwaters of Pelotas Basin targeting the Oligocene, however the result were disappointing. The well was plugged and abandoned after being declared dry. To date, the only evidence of hydrocarbons in exploration wells in this general area have been from shows seen in the shallow water of Colorado Basin. Argerich-1 results will likely shape exploration in the region for the foreseeable future.
Source: S&P Global Commodity Insights.
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