Posted on 03/16/2009 10:14:13 AM PDT by thackney
Venezuela and Russia reached an agreement that opens the way for a Russain consortium to "be in the Junin 6 block of the Orinoco petroleum belt," Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said here Sunday.
The Venezuelan oil minister said he cut the deal with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who is attending the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, meeting Sunday in the Austrian capital as an observer.
They can enter all above-water activities in a joint venture with (Venezuelan state-owned oil giant) PDVSA, which is what we are going to do," Ramirez told reporters before the OPEC meeting.
The accord, an amendment to an existing cooperation agreement, covers exploration and production, calling for investment of some $6 billion in the field, which has the capacity to produce 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude, the Venezuelan oil minister said.
The agreement opens the way for the Russian consortium, which includes several companies, among them Grosneft, Gazprom and Lukoil, to join in the project, Ramirez said.
"We added some definitions to the existing agreement," Sechin told Efe.
On Saturday night, Ramirez and Sechin put their signatures on "the amendment to the Energy Area Cooperation Convention signed in November of last year," PDVSA said in a statement.
"The creation and operation of the Joint Venture -- for the execution of the project in an area of 447.85 sq. kilometers ( sq. miles) -- will be subordinated to the legislation of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela," PDVSA said.
Last November, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the first Russian head of state to visit Venezuela, and his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, signed seven cooperation agreements designed to bolster their countries' alliance.
I hear that the oil in the Orinoco basin is as thick as peanut butter and that the Venezuelans do not have the technology to move that stuff via pipelines. And a lot of the top Venezuelan geophysicist and engineers left there and are now employed in the USA. We have a whole “flock” of them at my seismic company.
Yes, Orinoco basin is extra heavy, 8° to 9.3° API.
It has huge reserves, but the production is smaller in comparison to the rest of the country.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/Venezuela/Oil.html
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Cue up the Enya...
The Russians should not be surprised when they have a falling out with Baby Huey and he nationalizes their holdings. It’s not like they couldn’t have learned from what happened to their predecessors.
Actually I wonder if this will ever get off the drawing boards.
The Russians may not role over quite as easy as previous companies. I think it would be entertaining to watch from a distance.
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