Eunice ÑAÑEZ
External Relationship Manager
SWCOL
About the company: Established in Colombia in 1995, engineering company SWCOL mainly provides control and automation processes for oil pipeline transport. Representing C&C Technologies in Colombia, it also has an interest in the country’s developing offshore oil and gas sector and will offer specialized services once these projects move from the seismic phase to exploration.
Deck: Though they have been developing incrementally for the past decade, offshore developments in Colombia are facing great challenges as they move toward exploration and production. Eunice Ñañez, development manager with national engineering business SWCOL, discusses the international expectations for both current and potential new projects.
What expectations do international oil and gas players have for Colombia’s offshore developments?
The Colombian market has been a promising one since the government decided to start offshore exploration. The prospective studies show there may be natural resources on the continental platform which we hope can be commercially exploited, just as has been done on the Chuchupa and Ballenas platforms for 20 years.
At the moment, there are only expectations. We have to see how the numbers are interpreted so we can evaluate if there is a possibility for a larger, commercial-level development. This would need between six and eight wells on the continental platform.
We are also hoping for positive discoveries in the deepwater regions. These will require specialized services companies to develop and bring in investment before the exploitation phase.
How prepared is Colombia’s workforce for offshore operations?
Colombia started to think about the offshore sector only at the start of this century, in 2002-2003. By 2006, there was formal planning underway and a state policy to begin exploration. However, in the last 15 years, we have not seen this effort reflected in the academic programs required to develop relevant professionals locally. We do not have a school for marine physicists or engineers, we do not have a school for oceanographers and we do not have a school for sciences other than biology.
This is a major drawback, as the country will lack the expertise to capably assess energy interests against environmental interests. A lot of politicians and lawyers in Colombia do not necessarily understand what the offshore exploration and exploitation processes entail, but associate them with damage to the marine environment.
Offshore work will always have an impact on the environment, but that should not necessarily be translated as damage. We have to know the impacts, the risks and the technologies to develop legislation and have it focus on the exploration and exploitation of these resources.
Usually, we find professionals who have studied abroad. With this we are risking human capital flight of students not returning to the country, which could become a big problem. Developing skills is costly in a short term, but it will be even more expensive in the long term if we do not keep these knowledgeable workers in the country.
What should companies and the government prioritize during this period of low oil prices?
We cannot stop the exploration process, because when that stabilization moment comes, we have to start exploiting. At this moment, we are working the sites that have projects already approved by major companies. Blocks in the Pacific and the Caribbean remain on standby.
We hope the two new discoveries made in 2015 will attract more companies willing to bid for the new blocks. At the moment and following the behavior of oil prices in recent months, the offshore exploration has suffered a slowdown, So it means that reactivation of this business field will happen with stabilization of oil prices upper than U$D 60 pb, hopefully before the end of 2016. We have to keep in mind that the offshore exploration remains very costly caused by of the high technology and knowledge levels required
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