Playing harball: Chavez says Ecopetrol will not be considered for an Orinoco stake.
Chavez bans Ecopetrol from Orinoco
Colombian state-run Ecopetrol will not have any role in developing Venezuela’s oil-rich Orinoco Belt, President Hugo Chavez said.
“Nothing,” Chavez told reporters late yesterday when asked what role Ecopetrol would have in developing the region, where Venezuela is studying reserves that it says will add up to more than 200 billion barrels.
“Zero,” he said in a Bloomberg report.
Ecopetrol was one of 19 companies that paid $2 million apiece for detailed information on the Carabobo block in the Orinoco Belt.
Venezuela’s state-run PDVSA is auctioning minority partnership stakes in projects to pump, purify and export the area’s crude oil.
Chavez withdrew his ambassador in Colombia on 28 July after the neighbouring country said leftist guerrillas were found with anti-tank rockets purchased by the Venezuelan government.
Chavez said yesterday that Colombia’s increased cooperation with the US to fight guerrillas and drugs is part of the US’s long- term plan to invade Venezuela and seize the Orinoco Belt.
As recently as 14 April, Chavez said Venezuela could directly grant a partnership role in an area of the Orinoco Belt to Ecopetrol.
The Colombian company also ships natural gas to Venezuela through a pipeline built by PDVSA.
That supply grew 35% in the second quarter compared to a year earlier to the energy equivalent of 26,400 barrels per day of oil.
Chavez said the $7 billion in trade between the two countries would decline as Colombian goods “aren’t irreplacable.”
Chavez and his Colombian counterpart, Alvaro Uribe, have had an on-again, off-again relationship, with Chavez pulling his ambassador at least twice from Colombia.
In friendlier times, the two countries have worked together on a possible oil pipeline to give Venezuela access to Colombia’s Pacific coast.
Chavez said yesterday that China, a possible project funder, had decided against participation.
Venezuela is in “no big hurry” to complete its offer of the Carabobo partnerships, Chavez said.
His government announced a plan in October to open bids 16 April.
That has been pushed back, with no date set, Oil and Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said 27 July.