Page 8 - LatAmOil Week 49 2019

LatAmOil VENEZUELA LatAmOil
Rosneft assumes larger role in Venezuela
ROSNEFT, Russia’s largest oil producer, is reportedly taking the reins of several joint ventures it has set up with PdVSA, Venezuela’s national oil company (NOC).
Traditionally, PdVSA has taken the leading role in its partnerships with outside investors, including Rosneft. But sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg last week that a sub- sidiary of the state-owned Russian company had taken control of discussions with several of PdVSA’s contractors – namely, local oilfield service providers.
The sources did not name any of these con- tractors, saying that the negotiations were still private. They indicated, though, that this was not PdVSA’s first step in this direction.
The Venezuelan company has ceded more and more responsibility to Rosneft over the last few years, largely because it lacks the resources needed to sustain many of its joint projects. It has lost many workers in recent years as Ven- ezuela’s economy has deteriorated, and its own finances have suffered as a result of low oil prices and the US sanctions regime. In turn, its oil out- put has dropped to less than 800,000 barrels per day (bpd), down from more than 2.5mn bpd four years ago.
PdVSA’s troubles have driven many of its erstwhile partners away. Even China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), which continued to do business with Caracas for quite some time after others stopped doing so, has reportedly halted or suspended work on joint projects.
Rosneft, by contrast, has been working more closely – and more extensively – with the Vene- zuelan NOC. On the downstream end, the Rus- sian company has hired many former PdVSA
SURINAME
employees to work at its office in Panama, which now serves as the main hub for Venezuelan oil sales.
Most of the crude traded by this office con- sists of production from Rosneft’s five joint projects in Venezuela, as well as liquid hydrocar- bons delivered as payment in kind for Russian loans to Venezuela.
On the upstream end, the state-owned firm has also said it wants three of its five joint ven- tures with PdVSA – Petromiranda, Petromona- gas and Petrovictoria – to raise output. These groups have been hit hard by US sanctions and by electricity shortages but are keen to improve performance, Bloomberg’s sources said. (The other two ventures, Petroperija and Boqueron, have not yet reached the production stage.)
Meanwhile, Rosneft has not confined itself to working with PdVSA. It has also taken control of Precision Drilling de Venezuela, a service com- pany formerly owned by Weatherford Interna- tional ™
PdVSA usually takes a more hands-on approach (Photo: PdVSA)
Suriname finds no oil or gas
in shallow-water drilling campaign
THE national oil company (NOC) of Suri- name said last week that it had wrapped up its 2019 drilling programme, known as the Near- shore Drilling Project, without making any discoveries.
In a statement dated December 4, Staatsolie Maatschappij Suriname explained that it had undertaken the Nearshore Drilling Project in order to determine whether its shallow-water coastal zone contained commercial reserves of crude oil or natural gas. The programme cov- ered an area of about 12,000 square km laying in waters 8 to 25 metres deep.
Staatsolie spudded its first well, Marai, within the framework of the project in April. At the time, it intended to drill another nine explora- tion wells before the end of 2019. Since then, though, it has drilled only five more – Electric Ray, Kankantrie, Powisi, Gonini and Tukunari. It has attributed the decision to scale back the campaign to “operational obstacles” and to the insights gained after the first well was spudded.
Initially, the NOC estimated that it had a 10-27% chance of discovering 65-800mn bar-
rels of oil equivalent (boe) in commercially via-
ble reserves. 
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 49 12•December•2019