Daily oil production fell to 242,406 barrels of crude oil on Sunday, December 12.
According to a report by Petroecuador, this means a reduction of 49.8% of what was registered until last week.
On Wednesday, December 8, a production of 492,716 barrels of crude oil was recorded. The daily average through July was 491,000 barrels.
The situation complicates the government’s aspirations to increase production to 526 thousand barrels in January 2022. All this, with the great campaign objective of increasing to 1 million barrels per day until 2025.
The regressive erosion of the Coca River, in the Piedra Fina 2 sector, Napo province, which puts the oil infrastructure at risk, would be one of the causes of the drop in oil production.
Four days ago, the transportation of oil through the Trans-Ecuadorian Pipeline System (SOTE) and the Heavy Crude Pipeline (OCP), as well as derivatives in the Shushufindi Quito pipeline, was suspended.
The suspension of pumping included the progressive shutdown of the wells and thus the closure of fields, according to the availability of storage in each of them and in the storage tanks of the SOTE and the OCP.
To face this emergency, variants of the pipeline are built that allow the pumping of crude oil to resume. So far, at least seven variants have been built away from the erosion area.
This Monday, December 12, the Ministry of Energy reported that Force Majeure was declared for oil companies that maintain contracts under the service provision modality.
With this measure, action and contingency plans are implemented in order to minimize the impact of the situation.
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