YPF advances on several fronts

Argentinian NOC YPF has been making progress in several of its projects, company president Miguel Angel Gutierrez told reporters at the CERAWeek conference in Houston on Monday.

According to Gutierrez, the NOC plans to carry out a deepwater seismic survey. The operations could possibly begin next month, as soon as a bidding round for seismic companies is concluded.

The NOC is seeking out a company to shoot 24,000 kilometres of 2D-seismic.

In addition, Gutierrez elaborated on the headway YPF has made with regards to drilling unconventional wells. The NOC has managed to reduce drilling times from 40 days to 15 days, and drilling costs per horizontal well from USD 17 million to USD 8 million.

The efficiencies will help YPF’s Vaca Muerta developments become economically viable. So far, only Loma Campana, a project being undertaken with Chevron; and El Orejano, being developed in partnership with Dow, have reached commercial production.