Peru’s Biggest Oil Producer Drills Again After Output Fell by a Third
PERU · OIL
Key Facts
- —The country Peru, a country of about 34 million people better known for copper and gold, pumps only a small amount of crude oil and imports most of what it burns.
- —The background PetroTal, a Canadian-registered company, runs the Bretaña field in the Amazon region of Loreto. It produced almost a third of Peru’s oil in June.
- —Why now It drilled no new well after January 2025. Output fell from a record 19,473 barrels a day in 2025 to about 12,300 in September 2026.
- —What happened On 21 September PetroTal began drilling well 25H, about a week ahead of plan. It is the first of eight new wells and costs about US$15 million.
- —The numbers The company wants to get back to about 20,000 barrels a day. It says 22 drilling locations remain, on 106 million barrels of proven and probable reserves.
- —What it means for you For investors, PetroTal itself guided 2026 as a low-output year. Any recovery depends on the eight new wells performing as planned.
- —Still open How fast the field can dispose of the water it produces, and when a stalled river-erosion defence at the site is finished.
Peru’s largest oil producer is drilling again. PetroTal started a new well at its Bretaña field in the Amazon on 21 September, its first since January 2025.
The field’s output has fallen by more than a third since last year. Because PetroTal pumps almost a third of Peru’s crude, that slide has dragged down the whole country’s production.
An oil field reached by river
Bretaña sits in Block 95 in Loreto, Peru’s largest and most remote region, in the Amazon basin. It is reached mainly by river, and heavy equipment arrives by barge.
PetroTal is registered in Calgary and listed in Toronto and on London’s AIM market. It began producing at Bretaña in June 2018 and became Peru’s largest crude producer in early 2022.
In June 2026 Bretaña produced about 11,200 barrels a day, 31.1 percent of national output.
Peru as a whole pumped 35,900 barrels a day, 16.6 percent less than a year earlier. The figures come from SNMPE, the mining and energy industry association.
That is a small figure for a country of Peru’s size.
Neighbouring Colombia pumps about twenty times as much. Peru relies on imports for most of its fuel, a gap that keeps widening.
From a record year to a slump
The decline did not start in 2025, as some reports suggest. PetroTal averaged a record 19,473 barrels a day that year, 9 percent more than in 2024.
The trouble was that it wrapped up drilling early in 2025 and then drilled nothing more. Oil fields fall off without new wells, and by the fourth quarter output was down to 15,258 barrels a day.
In January chief executive Manuel Pablo Zúñiga-Pflücker admitted that problems with “rig availability and production reliability” had hurt investor confidence. The company had already suspended its dividend, and it guided to about 12,000 barrels a day for 2026.
It has roughly hit that. Group output averaged 11,709 barrels a day in August and 12,286 so far in September, the company said.
The new well
Well 25H is PetroTal’s 20th horizontal well at Bretaña. It will reach about 4,300 metres along the bore, targeting oil-bearing rock some 2,700 metres down.
Drilling and completion should take about eight weeks.
The rig, called Estrella, entered Peru from Leticia in Colombia on 4 August. It was moved on by barge from the city of Iquitos.
The rig is contracted for eight wells.
Peru’s environmental certification agency, Senace, approved an expansion plan in March after a wait of about three and a half years. It allows up to 23 new production wells and five water injection wells.
“The resumption of development drilling at Bretaña is the culmination of months of hard work,” Zúñiga-Pflücker said. He called it “the first step in restoring our production base to a sustainable plateau” of about 20,000 barrels a day.
The water problem
Bretaña’s wells bring up far more water than oil, and that water has to be pumped back underground. In early March, 15 horizontal wells were producing and five were shut because the field could not handle the water.
Work on two injection wells lifted that capacity to just over 190,000 barrels of water a day in September. That is 9 percent more than in August, and helped raise Bretaña’s own output by about 600 barrels a day.
The company aims for 320,000 barrels a day of water capacity by the end of 2028.
A separate project to shield the site from river erosion stalled when PetroTal dismissed its contractor in March. A new contractor is still being chosen.
What comes next
PetroTal says it will update the market as drilling progresses. Well 25H should be finished around mid-November if the eight-week schedule holds.
One well does not reverse a slump.
Peruvian media report the company is aiming for about 20,000 barrels a day within the next 12 months. That depends on both drilling and water capacity.
It also does not change Peru’s position as a net importer of crude.
The district around the field depends on the output too. PetroTal says its payments into a development fund for the local district of Puinahua topped S/128 million (about US$37.7 million) since 2022.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is PetroTal?
PetroTal is an oil company registered in Calgary, Canada, and listed in Toronto and London. It has been Peru’s largest crude producer since 2022, mainly from the Bretaña field in the Amazon.
Why did PetroTal’s output fall?
It drilled no new wells after January 2025, so natural decline set in. Limited capacity to reinject water produced with the oil also forced some wells to shut.
How much oil does Peru produce?
About 35,900 barrels a day in June 2026, according to the industry association SNMPE. That is a small volume, and Peru imports most of its crude and fuel.
When did PetroTal start drilling again?
On 21 September 2026 PetroTal began drilling well 25H at its Bretaña field in Loreto, about a week ahead of plan — the first of eight new wells, costing about US$15 million.
Sources: PetroTal, spud of well 25H (press release, via energy-pedia), 23 September 2026, PetroTal, operations update (press release), 7 September 2026, PetroTal, Q2 2026 results (press release), 6 August 2026, PetroTal, full-year 2025 results (press release), 26 March 2026, PetroTal, 2026 guidance (press release), 20 January 2026, Infobae, PetroTal and SNMPE production data, 27 September 2026, Gestión, drilling restart, 24 September 2026, Drilling Contractor, 23 September 2026. Exchange rate: 3.3923 soles per US dollar, close of 25 September 2026. All retrieved 27 September 2026.
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