SEVEN INDEPENDENTS FILE BIDS FOR COSTA RICAN FRONTIER BLOCKS

Jan. 8, 1990
Costa Rica has received bids from seven independent oil companies for offshore and onshore acreage under its first formal round of bidding for exploration acreage. The sparsely drilled nation received bids for exploration rights covering 11 blocks, mostly in its northeastern interior and coastal regions. Held Dec. 15, 1989, the bidding was the first since the government established Refinadora Costarricense de Petroleo SA (Recope) to coordinate hydrocarbon exploration, development, and refining

Costa Rica has received bids from seven independent oil companies for offshore and onshore acreage under its first formal round of bidding for exploration acreage.

The sparsely drilled nation received bids for exploration rights covering 11 blocks, mostly in its northeastern interior and coastal regions.

Held Dec. 15, 1989, the bidding was the first since the government established Refinadora Costarricense de Petroleo SA (Recope) to coordinate hydrocarbon exploration, development, and refining in Costa Rica. The country has no oil or gas production.

Recope and the Ministry of National Resources, Energy, and Mines will evaluate bids, and the National Assembly is expected to award concessions by spring 1990.

Typical work program under a concession would involve running regional seismic surveys and drilling a wildcat in the next 3 years.

WHO BID FOR WHAT

Blocks 1 and 3 in the Limon Sur basin drew bids from a group made up of Albion International Resources Inc., Laguna Beach, Calif.; Aberdeen Petroleum plc, London; Blackland Exploration Ltd., London; Overseas Exploration Corp., Yorba Linda, Calif.; and Davis & Namson Consulting Geologists, Glendale, Calif.

Blocks 1 and 3 are in an overthrust play area on the western edge of the Panama deformed belt.

Although most of Costa Rica's wells have been drilled in the Limon Sur basin, recent studies suggest several new targets for exploration, said Western Atlas International (WAI), Houston.

EXOK Inc., Oklahoma City, bid on Blocks 7, 11, and 12 covering most of the onshore and shallow water areas of the San Juan River Delta, an undrilled area.

Mallon Oil Co., Denver, bid on two groups of blocks: 4, 5, and 6 in the Limon Norte basin, which is an area of broad basement anticlines, and 8, 9, and 10 in the San Carlos basin near the Pataste oil seeps.

Recope offered 27 blocks covering more than 54,000 sq km of acreage onshore and in generally shallow waters offshore in the first round.

Future bidding will involve, in addition to reoffered blocks, another 18 offshore blocks in waters generally deeper than 200 m.

BIDDING PRELIMINARIES

Recope, in cooperation with World Bank and PetroCanada International Assistance Corp. (Pciac), sponsored an 8 year period of reevaluation and organization of Costa Rica's existing exploration database and commissioned several major new studies and compilations of data to implement the new exploration round.

WAI assembled and marketed the final summary exploration package for Recope.

Pciac in 1988 signed a second, $11,246 million (Canadian) extension of a 1986 agreement with Recope covering completion of a five well stratigraphic drilling program and financing of the transfer of a Canadian rig, spare parts, and materials to Recope (OGJ, Dec. 12, 1988, p. 29).

Until the current round, most Costa Rican exploration had been confined to southern portions of the Caribbean sedimentary basins, WAI said.

Oil shales, seeps, and shows have turned up in the country's Caribbean and Pacific basins.

However, only 19 wells were drilled, most shallow and many without benefit of seismic data.

Copyright 1990 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.