PDVSA gave oil production in Venezuela to foreigners • The Bell • RIMA

PDVSA gave oil production in Venezuela to foreigners

The Venezuelan state-owned company PDVSA gave foreign partners control over oil fields, Reuters reports with reference to the ex-minister of the country's oil industry Rafael Ramirez.

PublicDomainpictures / CC0 1.0

What's happened

PDVSA does not develop deposits, but only sign contracts with companies that have taken this work, says Ramirez. “De facto is privatization,” says a former official, who headed PDVSA in 2004-2014. At the same time, it is not fixed on paper.

Among the foreigners who develop deposits themselves or allocate money for this, Ramirez called Rosneft and the Chinese CNPC. Rosneft did not respond to Reuters and RBC requests.

CNPC also did not respond to the request, but its representative unofficially confirmed Reuters that the proposal from PDVSA was really received, but the company considered it unpromising.

Context

A special relationship between Rosneft with Venezuela is no secret. The scale of investment of the Russian company in this country has become the topic of the Sberbank CIB report, in which investors were offered to "talk about Igor." The report said that since 2013, Rosneft invested $ 8 billion in Venezuela.

At the beginning of 2019, Venezuela owed Rosneft $ 2.3 billion, but in an incomplete year the company was able to “pump out” $ 1.5 billion from the country experiencing the fierce crisis. Venezuela returns debts with oil.

Rosneft is officially engaged in the joint development of oil with PDVSA-Igor Sechin personally participated in the “Khunin-6” “CHUNIN-6“ ceremony ”on the Khunin-6 block. But the media wrote that this cooperation is not limited.

The NEW York Times claimed that Rosneft helps PDVSA to circumvent US sanctions, supplying it with oil products in exchange for oil. And Reuters claimed that PDVSA asked at least two of its counterparties to make payments for Venezuelan oil through Rosneft (the company refutes that it was an intermediary in payments).