Uruguay aims to benefit from frontier fever

South American nation emerges as potentially promising new upstream province

Uruguay has awarded licenses for three more offshore blocks. And the country is hoping to benefit from comparisons of its offshore geology to rocks that have yielded recent finds in Namibia. Uruguayan state-owned oil company Ancap awarded two offshore blocks to Shell. The major's awards comprise the shallow-water OFF-2 and the deepwater OFF-7 blocks. Shell has an initial four-year exploration period and has committed to securing fresh 3D seismic surveys and resource evaluations.  Ancap also awarded the deep-water block OFF-6 to US independent Apache. The award is also for an initial four-year period, but Apache has committed to more work than Shell, including the drilling of an exploratory w