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LatAmOil VENEZUELA LatAmOil
“ anks always to China, for all this e ort and all of this co-operation,” he said during an appearance with Chinese government o cials.
Later on August 8, PdVSA issued a statement saying that Sinovensa would implement the expansion project in two stages. In the second stage, it noted, the joint venture will push pro- duction capacity up again to 230,000 bpd. is would represent an increase of nearly 40% over rst-stage capacity and is about 109% above cur- rent capacity.
PdVSA’s subsidiary Venezuelan Petroleum Corp. (CVP) set up the Sinovensa joint venture with CNPC in 2001 with funding from China Development Bank (CDB). e Chinese com- pany originally owned a 37.5% stake in the pro- ject, but its equity holdings have risen over the years. Last September, PdVSA agreed to trans- fer another 9.9% to CNPC, thereby reducing its own stake to 50.1% and bringing the latter’s participation up to 49.9%.
Sinovensa extracts extra-heavy Orinoco crude and then blends it with lighter feedstock
to produce a blended medium-weight grade known as Merey. Venezuelan blends are popular in China and other Asian countries, and Madu- ro’s administration has been trying to increase sales to Asian buyers since the imposition of stricter US sanctions earlier this year.
PdVSA
ARGENTINA
Vista Oil & Gas sees Vaca Muerta giving a lift to production
MEXICO’S Vista Oil & Gas has high hopes for its operations in Argentina, according to Miguel Galuccio, the company’s CEO. Galuccio told investors during a conference call last week that wells in the Vaca Muerta shale formation had pushed Vista’s production levels up in the second quarter of the year and would probably continue to do so.
e CEO reported that the company had extracted a total of 29,016 barrels of oil equiv- alent per day (boepd) of both oil and gas in the April-June interval. is was up by 19% on the gure of 24,400 boepd posted in the rst quar- ter, he said.
Oil and other liquid hydrocarbons from Bajada del Palo Oeste, the company’s first green eld project in Argentina, accounted for most of the growth, Galuccio said. He noted that Vista had produced 18,800 boepd of liquids in the second quarter. is was up by 29% on the gure of 14,600 boepd posted in the same period of last year, he said.
By contrast, he commented, gas output went up by just 5% year on year between April and June. Vista extracted 1.5mn cubic metres per day of gas in the second quarter, up from 1.43 mcm per day in the same period of 2018, he explained.
Galuccio did not provide a full breakdown of Vista’s production by origin, but he did indicate that the Bajada del Palo Oeste eld was already showing “outstanding” results that highlighted
“the acceleration potential” of the project. e rst four development wells drilled at the eld are currently producing more than 1,200 boepd each, he reported.
He also noted that the company had begun commercial development operations at its second four-well pad in July but declined to divulge any speci c data on output. e pad did show “encouraging” results in its rst 20 days of production, but it would be premature to assess the situation at this time, he said.
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Week 32 14•August•2019
