Titicaca Basin Petroleum Systems
The Titicaca Basin is located in the Altiplano region of the southern highlands of Peru. The region extends between the western and eastern Andean Cordilleras at altitudes exceeding 3,600 m above sea level. The basin area is about 47,085 km2 (4,708,536 hectares, PeruPetro, 2003). The Titicaca Lake lies within the basin area. Most of the exploration activities thus far have been concentrated in this area. The first exploratory well was drilled on the north end of the Titicaca Lake in the Titicaca Basin in 1875 at 3991.8 m above sea level near the site of an oil seepage in Pirin and discovered light oil (36° API) at 121.9 m into the Cretaceous beds (Newell, 1949; PeruPetro, 2003, Ordoñez, 1995). Between 1906 and 1915 about 300,000 STBO of oil was produced from eight wells in the Pirin field ranging from 55 to 85 m deep. From 1939 to 1946, the Peruvian government directly took the operation of Pirin and drilled 13 exploratory wells without any commercial discovery. Three wells Coata 1X, Coata 2X, and Ayabacas 1X were drilled after the signing of an exploratory contract in 1990 but they led to no discovery. The Coata 1X well had only oil shows at 1,860 to 1,606 m in limestone. This interval corresponds to the Jurassic Sipin Formation according to the new PeruPetro interpretation (Wilber Hermoza, PeruPetro, personal communication, December 2006). Exploration activities in the basin thus far included field surveys performing geological mapping, seismic coverage of 551.8 km of 2D seismic of 12-24 fold in Blocks S-2 and S-4 previously licensed by Yukos Oil Company (see SovGeoInfo, 2002), and a regional magnetic survey covering the northeastern portion of the basin. |
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According to PeruPetro 2006 block map, SIBOIL presently holds the Block 105 in the Titicaca Basin. Based on PeruPetro (2003) records, unrisked potential reserves assigned to nine undrilled structures of the basin is 942 million barrels of oil. The present petroleum system evaluation of the Titicaca Basin is based on integration of stratigraphic and structural information on the Titicaca Basin, published information on regional tectonics, structural evolution and heat flow of the Peruvian and Bolivian Altiplano, and geochemical data on the Paleozoic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous rocks, and the Pirin oil obtained from the PeruPetro database. Analyses on a few outcrop samples recently collected from the Titicaca Basin by PeruPetro and one Pirin oil sample have also been performed during the course of the study and added to the database for integration. There is no charge for this report. |
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Contact Rick Schrynemeeckers, Managing Director: Call: 1-281-681-8811 |
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