The Shell hydrocarbons company, with a wide history in Colombia on several business fronts, including the marketing of lubricants and the sale of fuels, would be selling their participation in several oil contracts in Colombia.
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In addition, it would cease to be an Ecopetrol partner in a project that was initially classified as one of the greatest natural gas discoveries in the country.
This was revealed by time in an article in which he indicates that the company is selling the 50% in the blocks Fuerte Sur, Purple Angel and Col-5all located in the south of the Colombian Caribbean.
The other 50% belongs to Ecopetrol, its current partner.
According to the publication, Shell’s decision to abandon his participation in these blocks would obey the natural gas that was found was not the expected magnitude.
Everything would indicate that the discovered gas does not allow to compensate for the infrastructure investments that are required to remove it from the Fund of the Caribbean Sea and take it to the mainland for its commercialization.
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“In detail, millionaire investments are needed to build an underwater gas pipeline of several kilometers and facilities on the mainland, something similar to what Petrobras and Ecopetrol will do for the production of Sirius natural gas,”.
Because of this, Shell decided to redirect his investments towards other assets outside of Colombia. However, it will maintain in the country the marketing business of lubricants and the sale of fuels, which is carried out through Biomax.
The crown jewel?
Since its discovery, a few years ago, the project was classified as one of the greatest natural gas findings in the country.
In May 2017, former president Juan Manuel Santos said that it was the greatest finding in the last 28 years, from Cusiana and Copiagua in 1989 in Casanare.
The first finding was in the Kronos Exploration Pozo (South strong block) in July 2015. Purple Angel (Purple Angel Block) was discovered in March 2017, which confirmed the extension of the natural gas deposit discovered with the Kronones well.
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Two months later, in May 2017, the discovery of Gorgon-1 was announced, 27 kilometers north of the Purple Angel well.
Finally, in August 2022, Ecopetrol announced that the exploratory and delimiting well Gorgon-2 had proven the presence of gas in ultra deep waters, thus confirming the extension of the discovery in Gorgon-1.
It should be noted that the sale of Shell assets could also include the Offshore Col-3 block, which has an association with the American Noble Energy (40 percent), a company that Chevron acquired in 2020.
If the sale of COL-3 is completed, Shell would join the list of companies that have made the decision to get out of the exploration and production of hydrocarbons in Colombia, as other industry has done such as Cepsa, Repsol, Exxonmobil, Chevron and Conocophillips.
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