For the next decade, Latin America is likely to maintain its predominant role in the oil sector. Unlike past years, it can now count on Venezuela’s return to international markets, as the Biden administration has decided to lift the sanctions in force since 2019. This decision is mainly conditioned on the holding of transparent and democratic elections by 2024.
This agreement will allow Venezuela to exploit its immense resources, represented by 303 billion barrels and over 5 billionof cubic feet of natural gas, ranking as the largest reserve in the world. Major international companies are already looking to seize this opportunity, including Eni and Repsol, which are currently finalizing the details of a contract with Petróleos de Venezuela Sa (Pdvsa), the state-owned company. As reported by Bloomberg, negotiations are at an advanced stage, and an agreement is expected to be reached by the end of the month. Mf writes it.
This situation gives the two large companies the opportunity to compete for exports from one of the largest deposits of offshore gas from South America. Eni and Repsol have already had negotiations with Venezuela in recent months, considering that Eni operates five oil companies in the country, and Repsol operates four. In August, there was discussion of extending the “oil-for-debt” deal with Venezuela, with US approval, to supply refined products to PDVSA and increase oil supplies to Europe.
After the imposition of US sanctions, Eni and Repsol had obtained authorization to take Venezuelan oil for processing in their European refineries, in order to recover the debt ports on December 6 indicate that PDVSA has allocated loading windows to two ships bound for India, as part of spot crude oil agreements with Eni and Chevron. Meanwhile, Eni is engaged in negotiations to increase production in the joint project with Pdvsa, with the aim of resuming exports from the Corocoro field, which before the sanctions produced approximately 24 thousand barrels of oil per day.