Norwegian oil giant Statoil has been awarded interest in its first Colombian licence, in the Caribbean Sea.
The company will hold a 33.33% interest in the offshore COL4 permit, operated by majority shareholder Repsol (33.34%) and developed jointly with ExxonMobil (33.33%).
Statoil’s initial working commitments in the licence – in its early exploration phase – include the acquisition of 2D and 3D seismic data to further assess the basin’s potential.
“Deepwater offshore Colombia is virtually untested,” said Nick Maden, senior vice president for Statoil’s exploration activities in the Western Hemisphere.
“The award of new acreage in this frontier area is in line with our exploration strategy of early access at scale.”
The company has previously drilled for oil offshore neighbouring Venezuela, in Block 4 in Plataforma Deltana.
But the development of the Cocuina discovery was withheld by the project partners, due to required unitisation between Cocuina and Manakin (Trinidad and Tobago) before further technical work could be undertaken.
Statoil is currently providing technical assistance to the Venezuelan Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in the unitisation process.