OGX Keeps Up its Drilling Effort in 2011

After a nearly perfect drilling campaign on various fronts in 2010, OGX start 2011 with new discoveries in the Campos Basin.

Although there was much skepticism at the start of OGX´s creation in 2007, after last year´s performance, the new Brazilian operator, which was created by Brazilian businessman and investor Eike Batista adding to the portfolio of his EBX Group can now easily be considered as a good investment, especially for those who bought in early.

Eike´s strategy to hire and partner with Petrobras´s extraordinary geologist and executive Paulo Mendonça was vital not only to gain market value as to bring in deep knowledge of where do drill and how to plan the E&P campaign.   It´s important to not that Petrobras´s exploratory success rate more than doubled after Mr. Mendonça took over the national operator´s exploration team.

Since its creation OGX has secured over 9 billion boe and 50 fields discovered (onshore and offshore). This year it has already discovered gas in a section of well 1-OGX-25-RJS in block BM-C-39 in the Campos Basin and oil in 1-MRK-3 4P also in the Campos Basin where it holds a share with Maersk as the main operator, however they did have one setback in the Santos Basin where the OGX-23 well had negative results for commercial oil. According to ANP, OGX is the biggest private investor in O&G exploration in Brazil, surpassing strong foreign competition.

The potential shown by OGX´s onshore blocks in the Parnaiba Basin (mostly gas) and the Para-Maranhão Basin (with a geological model similar to Ghana in WA) are also noteworthy along with the blocks it also owns in the Espirito Santo Basin which have already surpassed discovery volume forecasts.

This year it will be interesting to see how OGX´s drilling program unfolds and also how many of these recent discoveries it will be able to get online. The player is now dependant on getting the necessary assets such as FPSO´s and production rigs in place and pumping in order to quickly see more profits coming in. It´s also important to note that the drilling campaign will still be going on and that at this point they´ve basically uncovered a new O&G province in the south Campos Basin.

Claudio Paschoa