President’s acreage in Paraguay is comprised of four blocks; the Pirity Concession & Pilcomayo Exploration Permit which President operates with 100%, and the Hernandarias Concession and Don Quijote Exploration Permit which President operates with a 40% interest and right to earn up to 80%. This acreage covers a contiguous area of 26,000 km2 and significantly, encompasses the entire prospective area of the Pirity sub-basin within northwest Paraguay, which lies in the more regionally extensive Chaco Basin.

PIRITY
Operator and 100% interest

HERNANDARIAS
Operator and 40% interest and right to earn up to 80%

Key to this acreage is the combined potential of the Paraguayan Pirity sub-basin’s Palaeozoic and Cretaceous plays, which are simply an under-explored, unexploited extension of proven-producing plays in adjacent countries including both the Tarija Basin in NW Argentina and Bolivia and the Olmeda Sub-basin in Argentina.

Both play fairways have been defined and ‘de-risked’ by President’s comprehensive work in their Concessions to date including interpretation of 6,435 km of existing regional 2D, of which 2,098 km has been reprocessed, together with the acquisition of 1,662 km new 2D and 781 km2 new 3D seismic surveys by President between 2012 & 2014. This was followed by successful exploration drilling in the Palaeozoic Play on the northern flank of the sub-basin, which resulted in the Lapacho discovery. This encountered oil and gas in stacked and fractured Devonian & Silurian reservoirs and in which the subsequent flow tests were marred by very poor hole conditions and consequent engineering problems so, although mobile hydrocarbons were observed in the well, the tests failed to demonstrate commercial deliverability of the hydrocarbon pay encountered.

The Cretaceous sand and volcanic oil play remain undrilled on the southern flank of the Pirity sub-basin on the Paraguayan side of the play fairway, even though exactly the same good quality Cretaceous sand and volcanic play is already proven on trend to the south-west by the producing Palmar Largo complex in Argentina. This lies only 30 km from the nearest of two major complexes of 3D defined Cretaceous prospects mapped by President in their Pirity Concession.

President has now mapped over thirty prospects and leads across their combined Concessions, which have a combined estimated ‘mean’ potential of 3 billion boe unrisked prospective conventional oil and gas resources, with large areas on trend still with very limited to no seismic. The Cretaceous potential mapped to date in the south-west part of the Pirity Concession includes 6 prospects and 3 leads which have been upgraded by recent studies to include an estimated combined prospective resource of over 500 MMboe.

Significantly, in 2017 President completed a geochemical remote-sensing study over proven fields in Argentina and primary prospects in Paraguay, which concluded a clear coincidence of anomalies over proven fields and also the primary, newly defined structures President has mapped resulting in an upgrade of the primary Cretaceous prospects to appraisal risk.

In addition, many of Cretaceous leads and prospects have deeper Palaeozoic play potential, as well as unconventional potential, also recognised in the acreage, although this is at a much earlier stage of evaluation.

President has commenced preparations to drill one of the prospects in the Imperial complex during the second half of 2019.