Anadarko to invest $200 million in Peruvian oil area

U.S.-based Anadarko Petroleum will invest some $200 million to develop an offshore oil area near Peru’s northern coast, Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said on Monday.

Kuczynski and company executives signed three exploration and drilling agreements with state oil agency Perupetro in blocks Z-61, Z-62 and Z-63 in the Pacific Ocean adjacent to the Lambayeque and La Libertad regions.

“It’s important that Anadarko has chosen to come to Peru, to an area as vigorous as the northern region,” Kuczynski said. “These are deep waters of 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) where it is very difficult to work,” Kuczynski said in a speech after signing the contracts.

Peru is trying to increase oil output, which has fallen to about 40,000 barrels of crude a day, about a third of what it produced in the 1970s, as investment lagged.

In May, the government said state-run China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) would invest some $2 billion in an oil and natural gas block in a jungle region in southern Peru.

Source:reuters.com