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 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%

President Energy holds extensive acreage in the proven Cretaceous Olmedo sub-basin both in Argentina, where there they have current production, and in the relatively unexplored eastern part of the same basin extending into Paraguay.   Cretaceous and Paleozoic plays have been mapped from proven oil and gas fields close to the Paraguay and Bolivian borders, into Paraguay where a limited number of wild-cat exploration wells over a 60 year period have demonstrated a working hydrocarbon system.

President Energy has carried out an extensive exploration programme in Paraguay, 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 technical discovery. The Lapacho-1 well encountered two potentially significant columns of oil and gas in stacked, fractured Devonian & Silurian reservoirs. Difficult drilling conditions and engineering problems meant it was not possible to flow oil or gas to surface, and the well was abandoned for safety reasons.  So, although mobile hydrocarbons were observed in the well, the tests failed to demonstrate commercial deliverability of the oil and gas reservoirs encountered.

The Cretaceous sand and volcanic oil play remains undrilled on the southern flank of the Pirity sub-basin in Paraguay despite being on trend with the Palmar Largo complex in Argentina where light oil is produced from identical good quality Cretaceous sand and volcanic reservoirs.  This Palmar Largo complex in Argentina lies only 30 km from similar Cretaceous prospects mapped by President in their Pirity Concession.

President has now mapped over thirty prospects and leads across their combined Concessions in Paraguay, which have a combined estimated ‘mean’ potential of 3 billion boe unrisked prospective conventional oil and gas resources, with large unsurveyed areas on trend with excellent prospectivity. The Cretaceous potential mapped to date in the south-west part of the Pirity Concession includes six prospects and three 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 demonstrated the presence of anomalies over proven fields and also over the newly defined structures President has mapped.

In addition on the southern flank of the basin, below Cretaceous prospects there is a deeper, largely unevaluated Palaeozoic play, as well as unconventional potential, also recognised in the acreage.

President has commenced preparations to drill one of the prospects in the Imperial complex during the second half of 2020.