MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

GeoPark has plans to drill 35 exploratory wells in Chilean Tierra del Fuego by end of 2014

GeoPark Chile CEO Harambour said the company has created 183 direct jobs and 930 indirect

Oil and gas explorer GeoPark expects to end the year having drilled 35 wells in Chilean Magallanes and Tierra del Fuego, which must be added to the 560 million dollars the company has invested in the region since it began operations in 2006, said the company in an economic impact report presented by consultants Gemines.

“This is a historic assessment in terms of what GeoPark impact has meant for the region's economy, which can be estimated at anywhere between 12% and 14% of the local GDP and far greater when specifically referred to mining and hydrocarbons in the region”, said Salvador Harambour, GeoPark Chile CEO.

This means a direct and indirect input to the region's economy of over a billion US dollars since 2006 and equivalent to 2.2 percentage points of regional growth added CEO Harambour.

The impact on job-creation was also estimated with 183 direct and 930 indirect through contracts with 400 local suppliers of goods and services and to which the company has paid out directly over 60 million dollars.

“So it is with great pleasure that we can show the community some of the results and impact of our company operations, without needing to enumerate the level of production or discoveries, but rather emphasizing on the jobs and incentives for the local economy”, pointed out GeoPark.

As to future operations in the rest of the year and beyond GeoPark mentioned that by the end of the year the company would have drilled over 35 new wells, given a number of hits in certain blocks particularly in Tierra del Fuego. These operations are undertaken together with ENAP (Chile's government oil and gas corporation), via the Special Contracts for Petroleum Operations, CEOP.

Drilling has helped determine five more prospects which could be in production in a near future, adding to the current provision.

“We are seeing that there are still reserves and it has been possible to further incorporate new prospects which ensure future production. It's not easy to further discover but new techniques and resources are updating constantly, and incorporating production, and thus we believe there is no room to generate alarm to that respect”, concluded Harambour.

GeoPark is a Latin American oil and gas explorer, operator and consolidator with oil and gas assets and growth platforms in Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina.