MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Venezuela boosts oil exports to China

Venezuela's Energy minister announced Wednesday the doubling of oil exports to China and tried to mend fences with Spanish-Argentine oil and gas corporation Repsol-YPF which he previously described as “colonialist”.

Rafael Ramirez said that "very soon" Venezuela will be exporting 300,000 barrels of oil per day to China, as part of the contract with China National Petroleum Corporation The contract signed last year initially called for 100,000 barrels of crude per day and another 60,000 barrels of oil derivatives.

President Hugo Chavez visited China at the end of 2004 to sign a series of energy and trade agreements, and recently said he would consider returning to the Beijing for purchases of military aircraft.

President Chavez who has been described by US intelligence as Latinamerica main security risk, has been seeking to purchase military and training aircraft from Spain and Brazil, but the United States has denied re-export licenses for some of the crucial elements of the planes, with U.S. technology.

Back walking on the incident with Repsol-YPF, Mr Ramirez underlined in an interview published in El Nacional of Caracas that, "taking into consideration that the head of the Bolivian Energy and Mines Ministry, Andres Soliz, termed Repsol's practices in Bolivia illegal, I said that, if that is true, if it committed irregularities, then that would be a colonialist action".

"Companies such as British Petroleum, Total from France and Chevron from United States, to give you an example, did the same here" in Venezuela, Ramirez said in reference to alleged tax evasion and the extraction of crude from larger areas than those assigned in old "operating agreements," which were annulled after being considered "damaging to the national interest" by President Chavez administration.

In compliance with a new hydrocarbons law, multinational oil firms that formerly were able to operate independently in Venezuela, including Repsol-YPF, have been forced to operate beginning this year as joint ventures, with state-owned oil firm PDVSA as majority partner.