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Six Foreign Petrol Firms Sign New Contracts With Venezuela's State Oil Company

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 December 2005, 09:00 CST

Six foreign petrol firms sign new contracts with Venezuela's state oil company

CARACAS, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Six foreign oil companies have agreed to convert their companies into joint ventures with Venezuela's state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said on Monday.

According to the PDVSA, the combined companies' production is 216 barrels a day, or 40.78 percent of the oil companies operating in Venezuela.

The only major company missing from the deal is Quaimare-La Ceiba, which is jointly owned by Spanish-Argentine oil company Repsol and Exxon-Mobil.

Exxon-Mobil has said that it will resist the move toward such joint ventures, according to Ramirez.

Exxon has invested heavily in Venezuela's Orinoco Strip project to turn bitumen into petrol. It also plans to build a three billion dollar petrochemical plant alongside Petroquima de Venezuela, the state-owned petrochemical company.

The multinational companies that have signed are Chevron LatinAmerica, Statoil Venezuela, Italy's Eni Dacion, France's Total Oil and Gas Venezuela, BP Venezuela Holdings and West Falcon Samsung hydrocarbons.

Twenty-two private and foreign state-operated firms pump oil in Venezuela at 32 fields under contracts signed in the 1990's under past administrations.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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