
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected in Caracas early Friday on time to pay tribute to his late Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, who died earlier this week after a two-year battle with cancer. Ahmadinejad left Tehran for Caracas on Thursday.

Venezuela will hike the amount of oil it is sending to India's Reliance Industries and signed a new 15-year supply contract with the company, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez announced this week.

Venezuela and Argentina signed three institutional agreements and 24 among corporations during the two-day First Meeting for the Venezuela-Argentina Petro-industrial development with the purpose of intensifying trade, investment and cooperation between the two countries.

Venezuela is carrying out an “exhaustive” inspection of its biggest refinery before attempting to restart processing after extinguishing a four-day fire yesterday caused by an explosion that killed 48 people and left hundreds homeless.

Venezuela's biggest refinery is on track to restart within two days, the Energy minister said on Sunday, a day after an explosion and fire there killed 41people in one of the global oil industry's deadliest accidents.

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.