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Ecuador declares force majeure after SOTE outage: oil minister
QUITO
Petroleumworld.com, Mar 03, 2008
Ecuador still hopes its oil exports will not be delayed despite declaring
force majeure after a landslide Thursday damaged the SOTE export pipeline, oil
minister Galo Chiriboga said Friday.The declaration of force majeure was a "precautionary measure," he said.
"We think that we will be able to comply with the loading schedule, but
we need to declare this in any case," Chiriboga said in a phone interview. "We
hope to fix this in three days."A spokesman from state oil company Petroecuador had indicated earlier
Friday that exports would be deferred by three days.A total of about 4,000 barrels of crude and fuel, from a nearby fuel
pipeline which was also damaged, were spilled, Chiriboga said.Petroecuador will handle the environmental clean-up, he said.
The costs for the lost crude and repairing the damage are still being
evaluated, Chiriboga said.Petroecuador should not have to cut oil production of about 275,000 b/d
if repairs are completed within three days, as it has spare storage capacity
or could alternatively pay to ship crude through the privately owned
heavy-crude OCP pipeline, the head of Petroecuador's production affiliate
Petroproduccion Patricio Goyes said earlier Friday.The landslide was triggered by some of the heaviest rains to hit Ecuador
in at least a decade, causing 23 deaths and an estimated $1 billion in
damages, security minister Gustavo Larrea announced Thursday.The SOTE pipeline, which runs 503 km (312 miles) from the Amazon region
to the port of Balao on the Pacific Coast, carries an average of 357,000 b/d
of crude and has a capacity of 390,000 b/d. Petroecuador exports about 167,000
b/d.
Story from Platts
Platts 29 02 08Copyright© 2007 Petroleumworld. All rights reserved.
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