Ecuador has an estimated 8.3 Bbbl of oil reserves and a rich history of oil exploration and production within the Amazon Basin east of the Andes. To the west of the Andes, early onshore exploration resulted in a number of onshore oil discoveries, which provided much of Ecuador’s oil exports from 1920 to 1960. Taking this oil province offshore with the rudimentary seismic available in the 1960s and 1970s led to a hit-or-miss exploration affair, and despite oil, condensate and gas discoveries, the offshore sweet spot remained illusive. Until now. Reprocessing of the legacy seismic dataset, using 2026 technologies, is generating new confidence in offshore exploration. It is clear now that this offshore margin, with its large prospects (that we can now image), in shallow water, is so prospective, it’s like looking for a candy in a sweetshop.

Indeed, seismic reprocessing follows much the same path as extracting sugar from sugar cane. Raw materials – the legacy offshore Ecuador datasets – are carefully pounded by modern algorithms until the sweet primary signal is distilled from the chaff of noise and multiples that made working the data so difficult for the early explorers.