Colombian state-run oil company Ecopetrol expects its joint venture with Occidental Petroleum to drill 90 wells in the Permian Basin this year, Kallanish Energy reports.

Ecopetrol CEO Felipe Bayon Pardo said in an earnings call with analysts Wednesday the Rodeo JV will give the company some 7,000 to 9,000 barrels of crude production this year, production expected to increase over the course of the next few years.

“We will be seeing some 90 wells, 90 wells drilled in that JV this year, 50 of them online, four rigs running. So that’s going very well,” said Pardo.

Ecopetrol’s $1.5 billion investment in the U.S. JV has already translated into an additional 164 million barrels place in the company’s reserves in 2019. The Rodeo Midland Basin JV is 49% owned by Ecopetrol and 51% by Occidental. The partners plan to develop roughly 97,000 acres in the Permian.

In Colombia, Pardo said Ecopetrol is “quite comfortable” with the proposed development of unconventional resources. He said the discussions around this type of exploration has been ongoing for over 10 years, and a lot of progress has happened.

Colombia’s high court has banned the “full on” development of unconventionals using hydraulic fracturing, but allowed so-called pilot projects to go ahead. Ecopetrol said it will apply for necessary permits in a paced manner.

“I think what we’ve said, and I’ll just reinforce that here, is first, we don’t need to do the unconventional development quickly. We need to do it well,” Pardo told analysts. “And we know how to do it in a way in which we’re transparently interfacing with the communities, with the governments, with the unions, with academia, with everybody else. And so that’s what we’ll do. And we’re committing to do those pilot projects when the regulation and the legislation is ready, and the government is working on that.”

This post appeared first on Kallanish Energy News.