Repsol YPF SA confirmed earlier reports that it has made a giant natural gas discovery off Venezuela. The company, in an exploration partnership with Italy's Eni SPA, said the Perla-1 well could hold 7- 8 tcf of gas in place and said that further tests would be needed to determine the discovery's exact size.

The gas was discovered on a 924 sq km exploration block called Cardon IV, which the Spanish firm began exploring in 2006 along with Venezuela's state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).

The block was one of three that drew bids in the October 2005 Rafael Urdaneta Phase A license round in the eastern Gulf of Venezuela. Three more blocks drew bids in Phase B in November 2005.

Repsol YPF and Eni would have stakes of 32.5% each in future production, while PDVSA would get 35%.

Earlier, the Spanish daily El Pais newspaper quoted Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez as saying that 1.5-2 tcf of the 7-8 tcf could be recoverable - a figure that Repsol YPF could not confirm. Repsol said the areal extent could be as large as 33 sq km.

In any case, Chavez saw the find as boosting Venezuela into the top tier of world gas producers, saying, "At the rate the certified scientific discoveries are going, Venezuela's gas reserves will place it among the top five in the world."

Chavez was in Spain as part of a state tour of European and Asian countries, which has included Iran, Turkmenistan, and Russia, where several agreements were signed for the developments of Venezuela's Orinoco heavy oil belt.

Regarding Perla, Repsol also dedined to give the formation or depth or to say whether the gas contains liquids, It said the discovery is the largest ever and the largest nonassociated gas find in Venezuela.

Fig. 1

Repsol-eni's perla gas discovery OFF VENEZUELA

Perla is about 30 km northwest of PDVSA's Paraguana Peninsula refinery complex, the world's largest. Gas for the complex comes from Lake Maracaibo and from eastern Venezuela the new Interconexion Centro Occidente pipeline.

Perla, 130 miles northeast of Maracaibo city, is also 180 miles east of Chevron-operated Riohacha, Ballena, and Chuchupa dry gas fields in the Caribbean as far as 32 km off Colombia's Guajira Peninsula (see map, OGJ, July 22, 1974, p. 28).