Since the end of 2015, the National Hydrocarbons Agency ("ANH") has been working on a new regulation for the Allocation of Areas, for the purpose of setting the rules for the objective selection of contractors and the allocation of areas. The ANH published a first draft on December 29, 2015 in order to receive comments from the public. 

To satisfy the needs of the country and of the industry, and to move forward the procedure to regulate the allocation of areas, on September 6 the ANH published a new draft Regulation for the Allocation of Areas of Exploration and Production of Hydrocarbons (the "Draft Regulation"), which is the result of the analysis of the comments made by the public. 

The purpose of the Draft Regulation is to establish the criteria for allocation of exploration and production agreements, the different modalities of contractor´s selection process, a new scoring system to evaluate exploratory programs and provisions related to the content of E&P agreements. The final Regulation for the Allocation of Areas will supersede Agreement No. 4 of 2012, regarding the criteria for the administration and allocation of areas. 

The document is open for comments until September 18, 2016

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