Page 10 - LatAmOil Week 17 2020

LatAmOil VENEZUELA LatAmOil
Halliburton follows Chevron in pledging to exit Venezuela
HOUSTON-BASED Halliburton has pledged to wrap up most of its activities in Venezuela, in line with instructions from the US Treasury Department.
The oilfield services giant announced its plan on April 24, in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. It did so in line with new restrictions on oil drilling, transportation and sales imposed by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on April 21.
Halliburton said in the filing that it intended to shut down its primary operations in Ven- ezuela before the end of this year. “Through December 1, 2020 we are only permitted to perform certain transactions and activities nec- essary for safety or the preservation of assets in Venezuela, along with other administrative activities,” it stated.
The company said that the withdrawal was not likely to affect its balance sheet this year. “Since we have previously written down all of our investment in Venezuela and have main- tained limited operations in this country ... we do not expect the expiration of the licence to have a material adverse effect on our business, consolidated results of operations and consoli- dated financial condition,” it said.
But it also noted that it expected to lose access to equipment and other assets in the South American country. “It is unlikely that we will be able to remove our assets that remain in Vene- zuela, and those assets may be expropriated,” it reported.
In taking this step, Halliburton is following
BRAZIL
Chevron’s lead. The Treasury Department ordered the California-based oil major and four oilfield service providers last week (Hallibur- ton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Weath- erford International) to suspend their activities in Venezuela and prepare to exit the country by December 1.
Chevron has already pledged to comply with the instructions, but as of press time, the other two service providers had not commented pub- licly on the matter.
The Treasury Department’s restrictions on Chevron and the service companies are part of the expanded sanctions imposed on Venezuela in early 2019. The US government introduced the sanctions in support of Venezuela’s opposi- tion leader Juan Guaido, who claims that Presi- dent Nicolas Maduro used fraudulent means to secure re-election in late 2018. ™
Halliburton says its Venezuelan assets may be expropriated (Photo: File)
Wood Mackenzie hails Petrobras’ response to fall in gas consumption
BRAZIL’S national oil company (NOC) Petro- bras has won praise from Wood Mackenzie for its response to recent declines in domestic natu- ral gas consumption.
The international consultancy noted last week that Petrobras’s gas operations had been negatively affected by the coronavirus (COVID- 19) pandemic. More specifically, it said, the
NOC had had to decide what to do when indus- trial gas consumption levels dropped following the introduction of public measures designed to contain the virus.
The decline was relatively slow in March but picked up speed in the first half of April, follow-
ing the imposition of a nationwide lockdown, it
noted in a statement dated April 24. 
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