PdV, Joint Ventures Miss Oil Targets

Instant Max AI

(Argus, 9.Aug.2018) – Venezuela’s state-owned PdV and its joint ventures fell short of officially targeted crude production by more than 125,000 b/d in July, according to an internal PdV upstream report obtained by Argus.

The steepest shortfalls were registered in the Orinoco heavy oil belt — long touted by the Opec country as the driver of ambitious growth plans — and PdV’s western division around Lake Maracaibo.

The monthly report indicates that July production averaged 1,526,600 b/d, compared with a target of 1,651,700 b/d, with operations by PdV and its joint ventures both explicitly missing their targets.

The report data does not include annual or monthly comparisons. Venezuela’s official June production, according to Opec’s latest Monthly Oil Market Report, was 1.531mn b/d. The average of secondary sources, including Argus, was 1.340mn b/d.

PdV officials tell Argus that the production data in the monthly internal report are systematically inflated, mainly by the company’s eastern and western divisions. “They play with the storage tanks and what they report is not reality,” one senior executive says. Actual July national production was around 1.25mn b/d, the officials say.

Despite its shortcomings, the report sheds light on field-by-field and divisional performance trends, acknowledging that neither PdV nor its joint ventures with foreign companies has been able to check Venezuela’s precipitous decline in output. Among the factors fueling the trend are scant maintenance, reservoir mismanagement, skilled labor flight and a lack of critical naphtha and light crude for transport and blending.

The Orinoco oil belt produced 843,200 b/d of crude in July, compared with a targeted 908,200 b/d, the report indicates. Of the belt’s four producing blocks, Carabobo accounted for 375,000 b/d, 23,500 b/d short of its target. PetroMonagas, a PdV joint venture with Russia’s state-controlled Rosneft, accounted for 119,700 b/d or 32pc of the block’s total reported output. That’s followed by Sinovensa, a PdV joint venture with China’s state-owned CNPC, with 91,800 b/d or 24pc.

In the Orinoco’s Junin block, July output averaged 191,800 b/d, off target by 16,500 b/d. The top producer with 71,600 b/d was PetroCedeno, in which France´s Total and Norway´s Equinor are PdV´s minority partners. The joint venture´s production missed its target by 12,200 b/d, well in excess of any other project in the block, the report indicates. PetroCedeno has an official capacity in excess of 200,000 b/d.

Other Junin block projects, including PetroMiranda with Rosneft and PetroJunin with Italy´s Eni, also missed their July goals. PetroUrica and PetroMacareo, PdV nominal joint ventures with CNPC and PetroVietnam, respectively, showed zero real and targeted output.

In the Ayacucho block, PdV´s PetroPiar joint venture with Chevron produced 123,300 b/d, off target by 12,400 b/d, the report says. The project has official capacity of 190,000 b/d.

In PdV´s eastern division, which hosts the legacy Furrial complex, July production averaged 326,300 b/d, just 9,500 b/d short of its target.

The western division, in contrast, produced 319,200 b/d, missing its target by 44,600 b/d. The shortfall came mainly from shallow-water operations in Lake Maracaibo and on its eastern coast.

The report indicates that 1,191 wells stopped producing in July, accounting for 333,200 b/d of lost output. The western division accounted for more than two-thirds of the number of deactivated wells, but the Orinoco accounted for some 80pc of the lost output, reflecting its higher well productivity.

The western division also accounted for 70pc of 1,114 well reactivations in July. These added a total of 183,300 b/d of production, mostly from the Orinoco.

PdV is reactivating the western division wells on its own and with small contractors, unrelated to the company’s vaunted plan to reactivate more than 23,000 wells nationwide, a PdV official says.

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