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U.S. refineries excluded from Orinoco talks: Venezuela
Reuters
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com 04 19 07
Venezuela's oil minister, Rafael Ramirez, ruled out on Wednesday compensating companies for the takeover of their investments in the Orinoco reserve by giving them assets the country has in U.S.-based refineries.On Tuesday, Venezuelan officials said the companies might be compensated with the OPEC nation's energy assets and said separately they were considering offloading the state oil company's shareholdings in the Chalmette and Sweeny refineries.
The minister's Wednesday remark in a brief interview with Reuters made clear the two ideas were not linked.
Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA is partnered with U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil in the Chalmette plant in Louisiana and with ConocoPhillips in the Sweeny coker project in Texas.
Those two oil majors will this year lose investments in Orinoco heavy crude upgrading projects due to a nationalization decree by leftist President Hugo Chavez.
The other targeted companies in projects valued above $30 billion and capable of producing 600,000 barrels per day are Chevron Corp. , Norway's Statoil , Britain's BP Plc and France's Total .
Ramirez has threatened not to compensate some companies for their losses in negotiations that he said must end by law June 26.
But Venezuela has also said it is mulling different options for compensating the companies, ranging from cash to payment in oil to exchanging assets.
Asked if exchanging the U.S.-based refinery assets was part of the negotiations or could be included, Ramirez said emphatically, "No."
Reuters 18 04 07
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