MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Venezuela took back 27,000 sq. km from oil companies

Venezuela reclaimed more than 27,000 square kilometers in potential drilling acreage from private oil companies last month by requiring them to join new state-controlled joint ventures, a local daily reported yesterday.

Amid efforts by the Venezuelan government to take greater control of the oil industry and boost its share of revenues, private companies operating 32 oil fields were required last month to form joint ventures with the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA.

Under the new terms, PDVSA took at least a 60 percent stake in each field, hiked taxes and royalties, and took back drilling acreage that it claimed the companies had failed to invest in.

Yesterday, the El Tiempo newspaper cited PDVSA Director Eulogio del Pino saying that companies were compensated for changes.

Unnamed foreign companies received a total of US$900 million in ??investment bonds'' that they might be able to use in new joint ventures to develop the oil acreage that was seized, El Tiempo said on its Web site.

Del Pino did not name the companies and was unavailable for further comment yesterday.

Oil companies such as Chevron Corp., Brazil's Petrobras, and Royal Dutch Shell PLC lost oil acreage to PDVSA during the contract negotiations. Venezuela is a founding member of OPEC and was the fourth-largest supplier of US oil imports in 2005.