Wintershall awarded exploration licence in Chile

Wintershall, Germany’s largest producer of crude oil and natural gas, through its totally owned BASF subsidiary, has for the first time been awarded an exploration licence in Chile.

A consortium of Wintershall, GeoPark, and Methanex was awarded the licence for the Otway Block. Wintershall and GeoPark each have a 42 percent stake in the consortium and Methanex holds the remaining 16 percent.

Otway Block covers a surface area of 6,000 square kilometres. At least US$30 million will be invested in the exploration of this block. The consortium has plans to commence exploration work in the Magellan Basin in the South of Chile this year.

Dr. Ties Tiessen, Member of the Board of Executive Directors of Wintershall Holding AG responsible for Production, said with the commencement of exploration activities in Chile we are expanding our portfolio in South America, which is one of our core regions.

We already have the first geological and geophysical data for the block. We will carefully analyse this data and conduct 2D and 3D seismic surveys to identify drilling projects, Dr Tiessen said.

Methanex, which is based in Vancouver, produces, supplies and markets methanol and is an important client of Wintershall and GeoPark.

GeoPark is a South American oil and gas producer with concessions in Argentina and Chile and the only private sector oil and gas producer in Chile.