petroleumworld

CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com, Jan 29, 2010

Chevron and Repsol were the leaders of the two consortiums to enter bids at the Venezuela Orinoco's Carabobo extra heavy oil auction Thursday according to company sources.

Sources said Chevron, made a bid as leader of a consortium with Japanese firms Mitsubishi, Jogmec, and Inpex. While Repsol was the leader with India's ONCG and Malaysia's Petronas. There was an unconfirmed report that BP enter a solo bid.

It was expected that Shell also could enter a bid by itself, but there was not confirmation one way or the other.

Late Thursday, still was hope that Petrobras, China's CNPC and Russian oil companies Lukoil, Gazprom or the Russian Consortium could enter the bidding, but there was not confirmation either way, sources said they were not to enter a bid, but we were unable to confirm with the companies there position.

In the mean time in Paris, Bloomberg reported that Jean-Jacques Mosconi, head of strategy and economic intelligence at Total Total said there were not bidding on the project.

“Our potential on Carabobo is limited,” “Conditions are not there to create an attractive project for Total.” Mosconi said.

Also, from Norway, Mari Dotterud, a spokeswoman for Statoil,said they were not entering the auction. “It wasn’t possible for Statoil to meet the terms the authorities set" Dotterud said.

The Carabobo projects include 3 projects with 7 exploration and production blocks and the construction of three heavy crude up graders that can convert the 8 grade API extra heavy oil into 32 grade API crude. The estimated investments are in the order $10 - 20 billion for each the project and the production expectations are in the order of one million barrels of oil per day on the 7 blocks by 2017.

The winners would form a joint venture with the Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA. PDVSA would have a 60% stake, in the JV while partner would have a 40% stake.

The reserves calculated in Carabobo's blocks are in the order of 20 billion barrels, while in the whole of the Orinoco belt, 300 billions of barrels of oil crude resources are estimated.

Story by Elio Ohep, editor of Petroleumworld. Phones: 58 212 635 7252, 58 412 996 3730, Email: editor@petroleumworld.com.Caracas.

Petroleumworld.com / January 28 1100 PM EST

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