Delayed bids: Venezuela's Orinoco Belt
Venezuela delays Orinoco bids
Venezuela has postponed its biggest offer of proved reserves to private companies by two to three weeks, according to the Norwegian embassy in Caracas, whose largest oil company is one of the bidders.
Stavanger, Norway-based StatoilHydro plans to participate in the bidding for the Carabobo area of the Orinoco Belt, the embassy said.
Bids had been scheduled to be opened on 16 April, said a Bloomberg report.
“Taking into account that the definitive conditions still aren’t set, StatoilHydro hopes that the decision will be postponed yet more,” the embassy said today on its Web site.
Venezuela is banking on increased production of heavy crude oil in the Orinoco to make up for declining output of more valuable light oil in fields that have been exploited since 1907.
Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, the only authorised spokesman for the bid round, was not available to comment, according to an official in the ministry press office.
Lars Troen Sorensen, StatoilHydro’s senior vice president of investor relations, referred a call to the Caracas office, which did not immediately return a telephone call requesting comment.
The Carabobo area contains 32 billion barrels of proved reserves, according to a brochure for the bid round that was temporarily posted on the Web site fajadelorinoco.com.
That is more than the 29.4 billion held by the US at the end of 2007, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
The Orinoco bidding in the so-called Carabobo Round will create three joint ventures between international companies and state oil company PDVSA. Each venture will pump, process and export at least 400,000 barrels per day.
Investments for each project may be between $15 billion and $20 billion, the Norwegian embassy said.
BP and Chevron are among the 19 companies who paid $2 million each for bidding data packs, the company known as PDVSA said on 2 December. About 47 companies expressed interest in the auction that began 30 October.