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Venezuela begins paying $1bn in oil debt

Venezuela has started paying off $1 billion in debts to small oil service companies, the energy minister Rafael Ramirez said, but the country still is negotiating agreements to pay at least $7 billion more to global service giants.

State oil company PDVSA, stretched by heavy spending on President Hugo Chavez's social programmes, as of last September owed nearly $8 billion to service providers as the tumbling price of crude oil cut into earnings.

"We initiated the payment of 100% of the debt that we had with 94% of the service companies -- we're talking about close to a billion dollars," Ramirez told reporters.

But he said PDVSA had paid the smallest companies, such as local service providers and health clinics, and was still in talks with larger service companies to convince them to lower their costs by 40%, said a Reuters report.

He did not offer a figure on how much PDVSA still owes.

The company owes $200 million to Halliburton alone, according to one source familiar with the situation.

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