Repsol will start drilling for gas in the Algarve next year according to the company's chariman who announced the news after a meeting with President Cavaco Silva in Lisbon today.
Antonio Brufau, the president of the Spanish multinational oil and gas company said today that the company will begin drilling for natural gas in the Algarve next year as “it would almost be irresponsible not to.”
Repsol "will start drilling next year in the Algarve. There are good gas reservoirs in the Algarve, which are close to ones that the company is already exploring."
"We want to move forward with exploring in the Algarve and have suitable partners. We are with Partex, but we want another local partner. If there is gas in the Algarve we will build infrastructure and run a pipeline to Sines," said Brufau.
On Repsol’s operational plans in Portugal, Brufal said "we are very pleased with the way operations are underway. Incidentally, in Spain, a country that is in a clear growth stage, the crisis has made us more efficient. "
"In the petrochemical complex at Sines we have gained efficiencies, working with raw materials in a more efficient manner. We worked with naphtha, we are now processing propane and have designs to use ethane, which will allow us to regain our competitiveness," said the oil man.
The Chairman also thinks that "Europe should not rely almost exclusively on gas supplies from Russia" having regard to energy security.
"It is clear that the connection of gas lines from the Iberian Peninsula to Europe would most benefit Europe, not Spain or Portugal, because they already have everything with the pipelines that link from Algeria," said Bufau.
"To ignore the Iberian Peninsula when there is a crisis in Ukraine seems to me to represent a certain irresponsibility.”
Repsol’s minority partner in the exploration of zones off the Algarve’s coastline is Partex, the Cayman Island-based company which is 100% owned by Portugal’s Gulbenkian Foundation, which in turn funds eco-friendly projects such as the Oceans Initiative along the Algarve’s shoreline using oil and gas profits.
Earlier, the respected engineer António Costa Silva, Managing Director of PARTEX Oil & Gas, explained the causal link between drilling and earthquakes subsequent to the conclusion of a study published in Science magazine.
"In the period from 2008, the frequency of seismic events increased about forty times in the test area of Oklahoma. There was one earthquake of magnitude 5.7 that destroyed 14 homes in 2001. We live on a planet with plate tectonics," said Costa e Silva who agreed that in Portugal seismic events anyway are common, it remains to be felt whether drilling will increase their incidence.
