The President of Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) Eulogio Del Pino visited Junin Division in southern Anzoategui state. He said that production in the area will continue to grow.
«For all those people that back in 2002 announced every week and celebrated production shutdows that they did do, we have very bad news for them. Our production keeps going on and on at the Orinoco Oil Belt, and it keeps growing and growing with the enthusiasm of our workers, we new strategies that we are developing with both our partners and our workers», said Del Pino.
During his visit to Junin Division, the petroleum minister found that one of the reasons for the sustained production growth at the Belt is that the industry has a lot of own equipment. «Fortunately, back in 2008-2009 when we had a price scenario similar to the one we have today, but shorter lived, we decided to purchase a lot of equipment» he said.
Petroleos de Venezuela acquired between 2008 and 2009 a total of 120 drills and core service lines for drilling. Today, Junin has 20 drills, 16 of which that are in operation are PDVSA’s.
The partnership schemes that Petroleos de Venezuela manages have moved forward and sustained production. «Some contracting companies decided, unilaterally, to throw away one hundred years of work in the country and opted to reduce equipment and stay in areas where they had pseudo-interests. We have replaced the space they occupied with our own equipment. We have companies in partnerships that have enabled us to do things jointly. There are many companies that left and now want to come back, when they have already been replaced by others», said the president of PDVSA.
Venezuela created the drilling joint venture Rosven with Russian oil company Rosneft.
There is also the directional drilling company Vencana, a Venezuelan venture with a Canadian private company, as well as Servicios Alex, a joint venture with a Venezuelan company.
The minister of petroleum announced that a plan is currently underway for the conversion of commercial debt into financial debt, which major drilling and services companies have already joined. «We change commercial debt for financial debt which allows them to get cash and to have economic performance instruments to handle the low prices situation. We offer these schemes to companies for whom it is clear that Venezuela is the country with the largest oil reserves in the world. These are schemes that allow them to continue with their operations, while in other countries companies stop their operations and put their workers on the street», he said.
«Production costs in Venezuela are extremely competitive. You need to take everything into account. If there is something which we are used to in the oil market is the transition from low to high prices, but in Venezuela they want to make it political and there are those who long for the bankruptcy of the oil industry», said Del Pino.
The minister announced that in the coming days he will make important announcements with regard to different areas of the industry. «We will have bad news for all those unpatriotic people who expect the company to go bankrupt», he said.
