Justin Jacobs, LONDON: Venezuela’s state-owned PdV is on track to start production at a number of heavy-oil projects this year in the Orinoco Belt. But the national oil company appears to have lowered its expectations for output this year, from a region that will be critical to future production growth.
The head of PdV and Venezuela’s oil minister, Rafael Ramirez, visited the Orinoco region in late January to lay out PdV’s strategy to meet President Hugo Chavez’s ambitious plan to increase oil production in the South American country by 500,000 barrels a day (b/d) in 2012, to around 3.5 million b/d. Central to this effort, according to Ramirez, are plans to increase output from the heavy-oil Orinoco Belt by around 40%, or around 470,000b/d.
Much of that increase will come from projects where...