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Venezuela wants majority in Orinoco oil projects
Reuters
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com 01 09 07
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Monday said four multibillion-dollar crude oil projects run by major oil companies should become state property, though officials said he was referring to previous plans for the state to take a majority stake.Just after ordering the nationalization of Venezuela's biggest phone company and announcing new reforms to bolster his socialist "revolution," Chavez said the Orinoco heavy crude projects would "become property of the nation."
Energy officials, apparently surprised by the statement, scrambled to portray the announcement as a reiteration of existing policy goals.
"Everyone knows ... that we are looking at the possibility
of recovering the majority stake that the transnational companies currently have in each project," Luis Vierma, vice president of state oil company PDVSA, told reporters.
"That is how I understand what the president said."
A PDVSA spokesman also said Chavez was referring to a decision announced last year that PDVSA would become the controlling shareholder of each of the four ventures.
The projects, joint ventures between PDVSA and Exxon (XOM.N), Chevron (CVX.N), Conoco (COP.N), Total (TOTF.PA), BP (BP.L) and Statoil (STL.OL), process around 600,000 barrels per day of tar-like Orinoco crude.
BP and Statoil said they were unable to offer comment, while a Total spokesperson said Venezuela had not given the company details of Chavez's announcement.
Chavez, reelected by a landslide in December, has promised to roll back a private investment campaign of the 1990s known as the oil "opening."
"Not long ago we were in the Orinoco Belt, and there still lies a living (symbol) of what was an important part of the oil opening -- eliminate it," Chavez said during the inauguration of new cabinet members.
"I'm talking about the international companies that have, well, control and dominion over these processes of, what are they called, upgrading of heavy crude in the Orinoco belt. That must become property of the nation," he said.
Several PDVSA and energy ministry official declined to comment on the announcement.
PDVSA currently holds an average 40 percent stake in the four ventures.
Reuters 08 01 07
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