State-run oil companies from Ecuador, Chile and Belarus plan to invest about $400 million to explore and develop the 490,000-acre Block 28 oil concession in southeast Ecuador. Ecuador’s Petroamazonas will have a 51% stake in the project, while Sipetrol SA, a unit of Chile’s state-owned Empresa Nacional de Petroleo, or Enap, will own 42% and Belarus’s Belorusneft will have the remaining 7%. About $30 million of the planned investment will come from Sipetrol and Belorusneft and will go into exploration. The companies plan to conduct exploration over a three-year period, and anticipate to produce oil from the block for over 15 years. The remaining $370 million investment, which will be used for production, will come from the three state oil companies, with their share of investment based on their stakes in the project. Petroamazonas General Manager Oswaldo Madrid said exploration work will begin in January 2015. Ecuador, the smallest […]