By an OGJ Online Correspondent
LIMA, Mar. 20�Perupetro SA, the state oil agency, is studying how to offer Block 75 to new companies since a Shell-Mobil consortium operating in Peru has returned the block neighboring the Camisea natural gas fields.
In 1997, Shell Prospecting & Development (Peru) BV and Mobil Exploration and Producing Peru Inc. (an affiliate of ExxonMobil Corp.) signed an exploration license for the block. Shell was the operator with 57.5% and Mobil had 42.5%.
Shell and Mobil withdrew from the Camisea fields in July 1998 after completing a 2-year appraisal contract of the fields. But they kept Block 75, for which they had a separate exploration and production license. They found gas in Block 75 in early 1998.
Perupetro might offer Block 75 for exploration and exploitation of gas reserves or it might offer a separate exploration contract and a separate exploitation contract.
At the time of the Block 75 discovery, Shell and Mobil estimated its reserves at 3 tcf of gas in the Pagoreni-1, within a 2 km outstep from the San Martin and Cashiriari wells in Block 88-B.
The Camisea fields in Block 88 have estimated reserves of 13 tcf of gas and 600 million bbl of condensate (OGJ Online, Feb. 23, 2001).
The Royal Dutch/Shell Group discovered the Camisea field in the 1980s.