Hannibal in the Andes

It is a truism that oil companies will go almost anywhere to find oil--and the jungles of Colombia are no exception. In 1963, after 15 years of geological surveys, Texaco discovered oil in the wilds of Putumayo on the Ecuadorian border. The find was among the world's richest; the location was one of the world's worst.

Texaco's 4,000,000-acre claim is carpeted with thick jungle fed by a 200-inch annual rainfall. As one engineer puts it: "Five hours without rain is a dry season." To make matters worse, the Orito field in Putumayo is 193 miles from the Pacific port of Tumaco, and in between loom the Andes mountains, requiring a pipeline rising to 11,450 ft. Because of the physical difficulties, development costs became prohibitive for Texaco alone, so the company formed a fifty-fifty partnership with Gulf, which supplied the necessary capital boost while Texaco handled the exploration. The project was christened "Operation Hannibal."

Slow & Frustrating. The first drill rig had to be transported by barge from Peru, dismantled, then dragged across the machete-cleared jungle. It took three months to move the rig from river port to drill site--a mere 20-minute hop by air. Since that early experience, virtually everything has been airlifted. To date, helicopters have transported about 80,000 tons of cargo and 131,000 passengers to and from the Orito field. But even with air support, it takes four days and 300 helicopter trips to shift the specially designed drilling rig from one site to another, five miles away. Mechanical failures have already claimed eight overworked helicopters and six lives.

On the ground, work is frustrating for the 300 native laborers and their supervisors. Bulldozers slop through red clay so slippery that they have to winch their way downhill as well as up. The biggest challenge is laying the pipeline, which will cost Texaco and Gulf about $50 million. Machete-wielding workers are helicoptered into the jungle to clear the land for the disassembled bulldozers that follow. Then pipe is dropped in. Four 3,600-h.p. diesel pumping stations are being constructed to boost the oil up the mountain.

Easing Off Coffee. The present timetable calls for 50,000 barrels of crude oil a day to begin flowing toward Tumaco at year's end. By then, Texaco plans to have 25 producing wells pumping an average of 2,000 bbl. daily. Best guess is that the pipeline's top capacity of 100,000 bbl. a day will not be sufficient and that a parallel line will have to be constructed. Estimates place the cost of the total project at about $100 million before the first drop of crude oil reaches Tumaco tankers.

For Colombia, the Texaco-Gulf project is a chance to inject much-needed income into the economy while easing its dependence on coffee, which currently accounts for 60% of the country's export earnings. For the two companies, which decline to estimate the total value of the Putumayo find, the project may initiate a far-ranging cooperative exploratory effort. Texaco and Gulf have already staked a claim on 5,000,000 acres in neighboring Ecuador, where last spring they discovered a rich oil field. Geologists, moreover, venture that the Colombia-Ecuador finds are only the beginning, and that much more oil will be found along the eastern slopes of the Andes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.