Page 8 - LatAmOil Week 50 2019

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The Pampa Melchorita complex also has a storage depot outfitted with two 130,000 cubic metre tanks and a 34-inch (860-mm) natural gas supply pipeline.
The latter handles gas from fields operated by Spain’s Repsol and the Argentinian NOC YPF in the Cusco region. It follows a 408-km route from
Chiquintirca, a town in the Ayacucho region, to the gas liquefaction plant.
Equity in the Peru LNG project is divided between Hunt Oil, with 50%; SK Energy (South Korea), with 20%; Royal Dutch Shell (UK-Neth- erlands), with 20%, and Marubeni (Japan), with 10%. ™
VENEZUELA
Venezuelan oil output continues to rise
More than half of the country’s total production is coming from fields operated by joint ventures
VENEZUELA reportedly registered an increase in oil production last month, continuing the recovery that began earlier this year.
According to the latest monthly report from OPEC, a group that includes Venezuela among its members, the South American country extracted 697,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil in November. This marks a 1.75% increase on the previous month.
OPEC’s report differs from official Venezue- lan data. Caracas reported directly to the cartel that it had produced 912,000 bpd in November, up 19.84% on the October figure of 761,000 bpd. The reasons for the discrepancy were not imme- diately clear.
Venezuelan oil output has plummeted over the last two years, in large part because of the imposition of trade restrictions by the US gov- ernment. The country extracted 1.911mn bpd of oil in 2017 and 1.354mn bpd in 2018, but yields nose-dived after Washington tightened the sanctions regime in January of this year. In recent months, though, output has risen, appar- ently because the national oil company (NOC) PdVSA has eliminated barriers to tanker load- ings at the Caribbean port of Jose.
More than half of Venezuela’s production appearstobecomingfromsitesoperatedbyjoint ventures between PdVSA and foreign investors. According to a technical report viewed by S&P Global Platts earlier this week, joint ventures are now extracting around 500,000 bpd from fields within the Ayacucho, Boyaca, Carabobo and Junin blocks. This represents a rise of nearly 15% on the figure of 435,000 bpd registered on November 4, the report said.
The document indicated that most of the oil was coming from the Carabobo fields, which are now producing around 272,000 bpd. It also said that Ayacucho was yielding 192,000 bpd, Junin 25,000 bpd and Ayacucho 11,000.
Additionally, it noted that all of the joint ven- tures working at these four blocks were operat- ing at less than 72% of design capacity.
Swedish court battle
In related news, PdVSA is facing a new challenge in Sweden, where the ad hoc board of directors appointed by Venezuela’s Interim President Juan
Guaido is seeking to gain control over Nynas Oil, a Swedish refinery operator owned jointly by PdVSA and Neste Oil of Finland.
According to a Reuters report, Nynas has asked the Swedish court system to authorise a company reorganisation. It said in its filing that it had taken this step because the US sanctions regime had rendered it unable to secure an extension on its bank loans.
The ad hoc board has spoken critically about Nynas’ request and has declared itself willing to work to “preserve the value” of the refiner. In a statement issued earlier this week, it described the company’s decision to pursue reorganisation as “unilateral.” It said it had tried several times to gain control of the refinery operator and had failed because Nynas “remains under the influ- ence of [President] Nicolas Maduro’s usurping regime.”
Thus far, Maduro has mostly retained con- trol over PdVSA. Nevertheless, Guaido, who assumed the interim presidency in early 2019 on the grounds that the president had used fraud- ulent means to secure re-election last year, has sought repeatedly to take the reins at PdVSA and several of its subsidiaries. It has, for example, appointed an ad hoc board of directors at Citgo, theNOC’sUS-basedaffiliate.™
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The blocks developed by JVs lie in the Orinoco Heavy Oil Belt (Image: Eni)
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 50 19•December•2019