Italian oil major ENI plans to invest US$7 billion in projects in Venezuela with the aim of boosting its output there to 240,000 barrels per day by 2018, company CEO Paolo Scaroni said. ENI's boss spoke at a press conference in Caracas with Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, who is also head of state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Scaroni said the investment plan includes projects with PDVSA-controlled joint ventures Petrojunin and Petrobicentenario to develop crude reserves in the Orinoco Belt of northeastern Venezuela and build a refinery in Anzoategui state to process that output.
The investment programme will "allow us to reach 240,000 barrels per day of output by 2018," he said, noting that an early production phase called for in the plan-originally slated to begin in 2013-will be pushed up to next year. According to Scaroni, Petrobicentenario's refinery will process extra-heavy crude extracted by the Petrojunin upstream unit in the Orinoco Belt into diesel for the European market. Ramirez noted that Venezuela has an estimated 187 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves-although that total could reach 400 trillion cubic feet if other reserves are certified-and 297 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. (latinpetroleum.com)
