Some 130 billion dollars will be invested in Venezuela's Orinoco Oil Belt between 2013 and 2019 to boost national production from 3 million barrels per day to 6 million bpd, President Hugo Chavez announced on Tuesday evening.
Venezuelan oil sales to China have jumped by 60% since the start of the year, the country's oil minister said in an interview published on Sunday in the state-run Correo del Orinoco.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez announced he expected to sign an oil/gas alliance between Argentina’s YPF and PDVSA (Venezuelan Petroleum) when he meets with his peer Cristina Fernandez in Brasilia in the framework of the Mercosur extraordinary summit to officially incorporate the country as full member of the trade group.
Venezuela's PDVSA said on Monday it will pay Exxon Mobil Corp 255 million dollars in compensation for nationalized assets, which is less than a third of what the US oil giant said it was awarded by an arbitration panel.
Venezuela received an enviable honour last month: OPEC said it is sitting on the biggest reserves of crude oil in the world – even more than Saudi Arabia. But the Venezuelan oil industry is also sitting atop a well of trouble.
Venezuela said it remains committed to compensating Exxon-Mobil and Conoco-Phillips for nationalized oil assets, as long as the amount is reasonable and either settle by mutual agreement or set by the World Bank’s arbitration panel.
Venezuela’s government giant oil corporation sacked half its board of directors Thursday after PDVSA ’s pension fund lost about 500 million US dollars in a Ponzi scheme linked to a Connecticut-based investor.
United States announced new sanctions on Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA and six other smaller oil and shipping companies for engaging in trade with Iran in violation of a US ban.
A power fault hit Venezuela's main refinery centre on Thursday, stopping the 310,000 barrel-per-day Cardon facility and partially halting the 645,000-bpd Amuay installation, a source at state oil company PDVSA said.
Venezuela signed an agreement with Chinese companies Citic Group and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. to negotiate a 4 billion US dollars loan to finance oil and construction projects, President Hugo Chavez said in Caracas.