Weekly Report - 11 April 2013 (WR-13-14)

COLOMBIA | Pacific Rubiales forecasts record production. On 9 April Canadian oil firm, Pacific Rubiales, announced that it was expecting to post a new record for its oil production in Colombia for the first quarter of the year. In a statement the firm, which concentrates the majority if its oil production in Colombia, said that it was expecting production for the first quarter to show an increase of 30% year-on-year with between 126,000 and 128,000 barrels of oil equivalent being produced per day. Pacific Rubiales CEO, Ronald Patin, said that “I am very satisfied with this strong start to the production year”. Pointing out that the reference price for Colombian crude, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), had remained stable at US$94 per barrel throughout the first quarter; Patin said that he expected that the company’s oil would fetch a price of between US$100 and US$103 per barrel. All of which will help to ensure that Pacific Rubiales’ first quarter financial report, due to be released on 8 May, will show positive figures.
    In this vein Patin added that he also expected that the measures adopted by the company to reduce its operating costs in Colombia, such as the construction of a new energy transmission line connecting Rubiales’ oil fields in the Llanos Orientales area to Colombia’s national energy grid (expected to be completed in the coming weeks), will also help the firm improve its operations in Colombia.
    The statement also points out that over the past 12 months it has conducted 10 exploration activities in Colombia and Brazil, six of which have resulted in the discovery of hydrocarbons. The announcement is good news for Colombia’s oil sector which continues to expand. Just the day before Pacific Rubiales released its statement, Colombia’s mining & energy ministry released its March oil production figures. According to the ministry, production in the month totalled 1.03m barrels per day, a 7% increase on the same month last year. The ministry said that the March figure showed that the production levels have responded positively to the national government’s long-term sustainability policies which have allowed for “increased exploratory activity” to be carried out in the country.