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Ecuador sets deadline for Venezuela's oil swap deal
Reuters
QUITO, Ecuador
Petroleumworld.com 07 13 06
Ecuador has given Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA until Monday to clarify the benefits of an oil-for-products swap deal or it will call off the agreement, a government official said on Wednesday."We don't have enough elements to consider that PDVSA's offer is in the best interest of Ecuador," Energy Minister Ivan Rodriguez told reporters.
"Therefore we will ask Venezuela to certify that Ecuador will have a benefit of at least $136 million."
If PDVSA does not reply until Monday, Ecuador will auction the crude earmarked for the deal, which is a six-month supply of around 70,000 barrels of oil per day extracted from fields once operated by Occidental Petroleum (OXY.N: Quote, Profile, Research), Rodriguez said.
The one-year agreement, which called for a swap of Ecuadorean crude oil for refined products such as diesel, was originally expected to save Ecuador around $200 million in fuel imports.
The deal between both countries has been delayed for weeks over disagreements on possible benefits for both sides.
Ecuador terminated its contract with Occidental over accusations that the Los Angeles-based company sold part of an oil block without government authorization.
Petroecuador took over operations at Occidental's former oilfields, which had an average production of 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of heavy Napo crude.
Petroecuador in June auctioned off 2 million barrels of July's output from Occidental's oilfields.
Ecuador, South America's fifth-largest oil producer, has an output of around 530,000 bpd.
Reuters 12 07 06
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