Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday hailed a US$4 billion drilling deal with Russia in Venezuela’s oil-rich Orinoco basin, as well as a refinery and oil-export deal with China.
Venezuela’s economy is struggling with cheap oil prices.
“Two days ago, we signed in Vienna an agreement we’d been working on for months ... It’s quite important that Venezuela and Russia have formed an energy corporation and established a dialogue,” Chavez told a Cabinet meeting that was briefly televised.
The joint-venture agreement was signed by Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez with Russia, on the sidelines of Sunday’s meeting of OPEC countries in Vienna.
Ramirez said on Tuesday the deal covered a “direct investment of at least 6 billion dollars” in the southeastern Orinoco basin that Venezuela estimates holds 53 billion barrels of crude oil.
Venezuela has agreed to a series of joint ventures with foreign oil companies in the Amazon jungle region for prospection and extraction deals in which Venezuela’s state-run PDVSA holds a 60 percent stake.
Chavez also said on Tuesday that Ramirez had just left for Beijing to sign “three strategic agreements” on building a refinery in China and “for Venezuela to supply China over the next few years up to 1 million barrels of oil per day.”
China imports more than 300,000 barrels per day from Venezuela, he said.
The plan is for China to be supplied with extra-heavy crude from the Orinoco basin to be refined in the new facilities going up there. A September agreement between the two countries called for oil exports to China to reach 500,000 barrels per day this year.
Venezuela is grappling with a precipitous decline in oil values. On Sunday, Chavez said he was considering raising the price of gasoline.
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