The Latin America and Caribbean Region organized its second technical workshop in Bolivia last week, when professionals gathered in Santa Cruz de la Sierra to discuss the country’s hydrocarbon potential.

Deep Exploration in the Bolivian’s Sub-Andean: Lessons Learned and Vision for the Future convened 91 attendees representing 9 countries AND 22 companies.

Interest in organizing a deep exploration workshop stemmed  from the Boyuy wildcat well drilled in the Huamampampa formation at nearly 8000 meters.

The Bolivian Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Energy and national oil company YPFB Corporation turned to AAPG to convene experts to shed light on the country’s potential for deep exploration in Boyuy and beyond. They requested a  purely technical workshop to be held in March 2019.

AAPG volunteers got to work. They designed, organized and completed the workshop in just six weeks.

Operators in Bolivia and throughout the region jumped at the chance to be a part of the discussion.

The program featured four technical themes, Structural Geology Applied to Deep Exploration; Techniques to Improve Geological & Geophysical Data; Integrating Data to Reduce Geologic Risk and Lessons Learned and Vision for Future Exploration and included 22 presentations from 13 companies.

Bolivia’s Minister of Hydrocarbons and Energy Luis Alberto Sánchez attended the inauguration, and after speaking to attendees, he signed a Cooperation Agreement between the Ministry and AAPG. The Cooperation Agreement sets the stage for enhanced collaboration between AAPG, the Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Energy and YPF Corporation.

The event concluded with remarks by YPFB Corporation Vice President Juan Carlos Severichi and General Manager for Contracts, Exploration and Production Javier Esquivel, who delivered a special presentation about YPFB’s vision for the future.

While in Santa Cruz, AAPG supported the YP Bolivia Chapter’s technical seminar featuring talks by Hector Alfonso from Ecopetrol in Colombia and Roberto Hernandez from Geomap in Argentina.  Approximately 35 students and young professionals attended, and five asked for information about joining AAPG.

AAPG thanks all workshop presenters and session chairs for their participation in the workshop, Ana María Goncalves and Javier Esquivel for leadership as General Chairs, YPFB and the Ministry of Hydrocarbons for their support as hosts and to YP Chapter members for all of the hard work and dedication that made the event a success.