By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, May 10 -- Drift Lake Resources Inc., Toronto, has employed Phil de Gruyter as vice-president of exploration and South American manager.
De Gruyter, a native of Colombia, has been involved in exploration for oil and gas in South America for more than 25 years in Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, and Bolivia. He joined Drift Lake from Talisman Energy and Talisman (Colombia) Oil & Gas, where for the past 10 years he helped build the Latin American program.
De Gruyter spent 2 years as a complex trend consultant and 8 years as exploration manager and technical lead for Talisman. He played a major role in starting and growing the Peruvian and Colombian portfolios for Talisman, resulting in acquisition of 19 blocks with more than 21 million gross acres.
From this portfolio, he was directly responsible for finding more than 450 million bbl of oil from nine discoveries with a 75% success rate including strat wells. The discoveries included Situche, Huron, Akacias, and Guairuro.
From 1991 to 2001, de Gruyter worked for Maxus Energy Corp., which was purchased by YPF SA in 1995 and Repsol in 1998-99. During that period he was a principal behind multiple discoveries in Colombia, Venezuela, and Bolivia. Discoveries included Volcanera, Capachos, Tropical, and Margarita.
Volcanera-1 was a 19,103-ft, pioneer foothills gas-condensate discovery granted commerciality in May 1997 with recoverable estimates of 5 tcf of gas and 250 million bbl of oil. The Volcanera discovery led to finding the Florena and Pauto Sur fields.
Tropical/Quiriquire field in Venezuela was a world-class light oil discovery with flow rates above 7,100 b/d of oil and reserve estimates in excess of 145 million bbl.
The Margarita-X1 discovery in Bolivia had flow rates above 20 MMcfd of gas and 740 b/d of condensate and was described as the largest onshore gas find in South America with recoverable reserve estimates in excess of 10.5 tcf.
File photo from PDVSA..
