Chavez hails oil deals

President Hugo Chavez Tuesday hailed a six-billion-dollar drilling deal with Russia in Venezuela’s oil-rich Orinoco basin, and a refinery and oil-export deal with China, as Venezuela’s economy struggles with cheap oil prices.

“Two days ago, we signed in Vienna an agreement we’d been working on for months … It’s quite important that Venezuela and Russia have formed an energy corporation and established a dialogue,” Chavez told a cabinet meeting that was briefly televised.
The joint-venture agreement was signed by Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez with Russia, on the sidelines of Sunday’s meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the Austrian capital.

Ramirez said here Tuesday the deal covered a “direct investment of at least 6.0 billion dollars” in the southeastern Orinoco basin that Venezuela estimates holds 53 billion barrels of crude oil.

Venezuela has agreed to a series of joint ventures with foreign oil companies in the Amazon jungle region for prospection and extraction deals in which Venezuela’s state-run PDVSA holds a 60 percent stake.

Chavez also said Tuesday that Ramirez had just left for Beijing to sign “three strategic agreements” on building a refinery in China and “for Venezuela to supply China over the next few years up to one million barrels of oil per day.”

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