The Norwegian company Equinor SAtogether with its partners YPF and Shellcarried out a first drilling in the Can 100 block in the Argentine sea 315 kilometers from Mar del Plata to find out if there are offshore oil reserves. Through an official statement, the company detailed that the drilling was completed “safely”, and that “No clear signs of hydrocarbons have been found“, so the well “has been classified as dryIn the province of Buenos Aires, they are evaluating each of the steps to follow.
In addition to the negative result, sources close to the company detailed The uncovering that, although the well “it did not produce hydrocarbons in economically productive volumes”, there is still much to study. “The drilling of this single well in a specific area is not sufficient to determine the hydrocarbon potential in the Argentine Sea,” even “not even within the CAN-100 license,” they said. They also warned that It was a drilling “in a specific area”.
Meanwhile, Equinor explained that the drilling of the first well in deep waters “It is a milestone in the history of offshore exploration in Argentina”. For the company, “this well, together with the seismic acquisition campaigns in the North Argentine Basin and the Austral and West Malvinas basins, represents an important offshore exploration campaign in the country.”
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How the drilling is going
Although the first drilling in the Can 100 block was classified as “dry”, from what was extracted in those works, in the coming months “all the data and information collected will be exhaustively analyzed”, which will provide a “greater understanding of the hydrocarbon potential in those areas” to the oil companies.
“The analysis phase of the data obtained is entered.”, which “will take several months”. Once this stage is completed, companies will be in a position to have a more specific definition.
Sources close to the project detailed that “In frontier exploration, that is, in areas that have not been previously explored, the drilling of several exploratory wells is usually required to achieve a commercial discovery.”. As an example, they explained that “On the Norwegian continental shelf, the first discovery was in 1969 after 34 dry wells were drilled.”
It is worth noting that the CAN 100 block is an area obtained by “Equinor Argentina SA”, in association with YPF and Shell, through a license granted months ago. This block is part of the “Argerich project” located in the Argentine Sea, 315 kilometers from Mar del Plata, province of Buenos Aires.
Why could there be offshore oil in Mar del Plata? In January 2022, the hydrocarbon companies Shell and Total announced the discovery of oil fields in Namibia, off the coast of South Africa. There, production of around one billion barrels of oil could be achieved.
As detailed months ago from the YPF company “There are plenty of reasons” to assume that there could be deposits similar to those discovered in Africa in the Argentine sea. “The Sea of Mar del Plata is a very similar area, with very similar characteristics, from the same geological time as Africa; That is, it is a continuation of the same continental shelf as Africa,” the company explained to this medium.
