Peru celebration: the Lima government said US energy company Barrett would invest $1 billion in the country's heavy oil sector
'Barrett to invest $1bn in Peru'
US-based energy company Barrett Resources plans to invest about $1 billion in Peru to develop heavy crude discoveries that high world oil prices have made feasible, the Peruvian government said today.
Barrett said it hoped that oilfields in Peru's Amazon near the border with Ecuador and Colombia could produce as much as 100,000 barrels a day from 2010, which could double the country's oil output,
Barrett discovered the oil deposits in 1998 but lower world energy prices made them economically unattractive at the time.
"We're obviously very bullish and that's why we're moving forward now," Barrett Resources Peru's general manager, Benjamin Schulein, told reporters in Lima, Reuters reported.
Daniel Saba, president of Peru's state energy investment arm Perupetro, said Barrett would invest more than $1 billion in the site, known as Block 67, in a plan that included a refinery and a pipeline.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg because along the border with Colombia and Ecuador there's a lot of oil."
Saba said some of the funding for the project would be provided by US Bank Citigroup.
The field's development could help Peru become a net exporter of oil in about three years, Saba said.