Page 6 - LatAmOil Week 26

LatAmOil VENEZUELA LatAmOil
PdVSA hopes to increase oil output by focusing on 13 fields
VENEZUELA’S national oil company (NOC) PdVSA reportedly hopes to boost output by concentrating its e orts on 13 speci c elds and shuttering less productive assets.
According to internal documents viewed by Bloomberg, the company has adopted a new development plan in the hope of reversing the fall in its production levels. Venezuelan oil yields have been trending downward for some time and are now averaging 741,000 barrels per day, down from the official figure of 1.5 million bopd in 2018. PdVSA hopes the new programme will push the gure up to about 800,000 bpd.
is may be a tall order, given that Venezue- lan production has been under even more pres- sure in recent months. e rate of decline has actually picked up this year in the wake of the US government’s decision to impose sanctions on naphtha, a type of light liquid hydrocarbon that PdVSA blends with heavy crude grades.
Nevertheless, the company hopes to improve performance by concentrating its e orts on 13 oil elds in Faja, a 55,000-square km area that lies north of the Orinoco River. It will focus on extracting Merey 16, the main grade of Venezuelan oil exports, from nine of these elds. Meanwhile, it will blend crude from the other four elds with naphtha to produce Diluted Crude Oil (DCO), a mixture of heavy
crude and naphtha. ese e orts will increase the volume of liquids produced from elds in Faja to 552,000 bpd of Merey 16 and 247,000 bpd of DCO.
At the same time, PdVSA will also suspend development work at 20 underperforming elds. Many of these sites have been producing no more than 500 bpd, so the company hopes that the shi will cause overall yields to rise.
Bloomberg did not name all of the fields covered by the new development strategy. But it did cite the internal documents as saying that the NOC intended to begin implementing the new development strategy on July 1. It also said PdVSA would mostly be using recycled naph- tha to produce DCO, since the US sanctions regime had complicated its e orts to securer steady supplies of the light blendstock. ™
BRAZIL
Petrobras launches sale of
four refineries under anti-trust deal
BRAZIL’S national oil company (NOC) Petro- bras is moving forward with the implementation of an anti-trust agreement that will reduce its share of the country’s re ning sector to less than 50%. On June 28, it launched the sale of four re neries with a combined processing capacity of 890,240 barrels per day (bpd).
In a statement accompanied by a prospectus for each of the plants, Petrobras listed the assets for sale as Re naria Landulpho Alves (RLAM), a 376,650 bpd facility in Bahia state; Re naria Presidente Getulio Vargas (REPAR), a 208,990 bpd facility in Parana; Re naria Alberto Pas- qualini (REFAP), a 189,600 bpd facility in Rio Grande do Sul, and Refinaria do Nordeste (RNEST), a 115,000 bpd facility in Pernambuco
It also stated that it was selling the plants along with associated infrastructure, including pipe- lines and terminals.
e NOC said it would only accept o ers for the re neries from oil companies and invest- ment funds or other types of nancial groups that meet its requirements.
To bid, oil operators must be active in the production, transportation, refining, sale or trade of crude and must have reported reve- nues of $3bn or more in 2018. Financial groups, meanwhile, must have at least $1bn worth of funds under management.
According to the statement, potential inves-
tors must con rm their interest in participating
in the bidding contests by August 16. 
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 26 03•July•2019