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Venezuela Oil Loans Go Awry for China

HONG KONG—As Venezuela’s economy totters thanks to low oil prices and years of mismanagement, a Chinese government-owned bank is badly on the hook. China Development Bank has lent nearly $37 billion to Venezuela since 2008, helping to prop up the regime of Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, while becoming one of the Latin American nation’s biggest creditors. Venezuela says China has pledged billions more. CDB’s plan was simple. In return for its largess, Venezuela would send China millions of barrels of crude each year. Since the middle part of the last decade, the bank has doled out tens of billions in similar loans to energy companies and governments in other oil-producing countries to help secure resources for China’s expanding economy. In Venezuela, the strategy has gone awry. In recent months, CDB has extended loan maturities and eased repayment terms, allowing the country to send it less oil […]

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Colombia’s No. 2 oil pipeline shut after rebel bombings

BOGOTA Colombia’s Cano Limon-Covenas oil pipeline, the country’s second biggest by volume, has been shut due to damage from bomb attacks by leftist FARC rebels which caused a significant spill that has contaminated two rivers, the army said on Wednesday. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels, known as FARC, have intensified attacks on infrastructure in the past few weeks after calling off a unilateral ceasefire. They have attacked pipelines and trucks carrying crude oil, as well as damaging transmission lines, cutting power to large towns. The army confirmed that four troops were also killed on Wednesday after being ambushed by the FARC who set off remote-controlled explosives and fired on them with machine guns while on patrol in the southern province of Caqueta. State-run Ecopetrol which operates the Cano Limon pipeline through its Cenit subsidiary, said in a statement it is taking measures to contain the spill as local […]

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Colombia: Oil Pipeline Attacked In Cordoba City

The Transandino oil pipeline was attacked in a rural area of Cordoba city, in Narino department, W Radio reported June 12. In the past 15 days, there have been three attacks against the pipeline. Authorities have not verified whether the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is behind the attack, but FARC was responsible for nine other attacks against energy infrastructure and security forces in the departments of Cauca, Caqueta, Narino and Putumayo.

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Hugo Chavez’s Legacy: One of the Worst Crime Rates in the World

For years in Caracas, as in most cities, the sun went down before the bars lit up. No more. Stop by La Cita, a Spanish-style pub near the heart of downtown, and find clients like Freddy Barraiz, an upstanding 64-year-old physician, knocking back glasses of wine in bright sunshine. “It’s like a race against time,” Barraiz said. “By 6:00, you start to get nervous.” With shootings and kidnappings an almost daily occurrence in this city once known for animated nightlife, crowds at restaurants and clubs thin out at dark. Businesses are cutting back hours and accommodating earlier crowds. “What keeps us going is lunch,” lamented La Cita’s owner, Javier Lopez. Venezuela was never crime-free. But long-standing problems in law enforcement have been exacerbated by erratic policies of the late Hugo Chavez, who favored military force over traditional policing. Since soldiers have little training in delinquency control, crime has exploded […]

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Venezuela finds new front in attack on U.S. fracking: water

VIENNA Venezuela sought to open a new front in its months-long verbal assault on the U.S. shale oil industry on Wednesday, suggesting it posed a grave threat to water supplies. In the latest criticism of the hydraulic fracturing technology that has yielded a gusher of crude supplies in Venezuela’s biggest oil market, oil minister Asdrubal Chavez cited the "huge environmental impact" from shale. "This does not seem to raise any concerns among the governments promoting it or the companies involved," he told an OPEC seminar in Vienna attended by chief executives of some of the world’s biggest oil companies, including Exxon and BP, both of which operate in U.S. shale. "It is a responsibility of the conventional crude oil-producing countries to develop price mechanisms that take into account these economic and geopolitical actors that promote technologies that threaten the availability of the fundamental resource for human existence: water." The […]

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Venezuela, Russia’s Rosneft agree on $14 billion oil, gas investment

CARACAS Venezuela and Russia’s top oil producer, Rosneft, have agreed on around $14 billion in investment in the South American OPEC country’s oil and gas sector, President Nicolas Maduro said on Wednesday evening. Maduro said he met with the chief executive of state-owned Rosneft, Igor Sechin, earlier on Wednesday, in the company of PDVSA [PDVSA.UL] President Eulogio del Pino and National Assembly boss and Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello. "We had a great meeting and agreed on investment of over $14 billion," said Maduro during a televised broadcast, adding the funds would go toward doubling Venezuela’s oil production. PDVSA has formal ambitious targets to double national production to 6 million barrels a day by 2019, with 4 million of that projected to come from the Orinoco Belt, but few industry experts or foreign investors expect those goals to be met. Speaking at a Socialist Party event broadcast on […]

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Venezuela, Russia’s Rosneft agree on $14 billion oil, gas investment

CARACAS Venezuela and Russia’s top oil producer, Rosneft, have agreed on around $14 billion in investment in the South American OPEC country’s oil and gas sector, President Nicolas Maduro said on Wednesday evening. Maduro said he met with the chief executive of state-owned Rosneft, Igor Sechin, earlier on Wednesday, in the company of PDVSA [PDVSA.UL] President Eulogio del Pino and National Assembly boss and Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello. "We had a great meeting and agreed on investment of over $14 billion," said Maduro during a televised broadcast, adding the funds would go toward doubling Venezuela’s oil production. PDVSA has formal ambitious targets to double national production to 6 million barrels a day by 2019, with 4 million of that projected to come from the Orinoco Belt, but few industry experts or foreign investors expect those goals to be met. Speaking at a Socialist Party event broadcast on […]

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Exxon makes big oil find offshore Guyana

Exxon announces the finding of a significant volume of oil in the deep waters off the coast of Guyana. Photo by project1photography/Shutterstock IRVING, Texas, May 21 (UPI) — Exxon Mobil said it made what it described as a significant oil discovery in the deep waters about 120 miles off the coast of Guyana in the Caribbean. The company ran through a 295-foot column of oil reserves while drilling an exploration well in the Stabroek reserve area about 120 miles of the Guyana coast in 5,719 feet of water, "I am encouraged by the results of the first well on the Stabroek block," Stephen M. Greenlee, president of Exxon Mobil Exploration Co., said in a statement. "Over the coming months we will work to determine the commercial viability of the discovered resource, as well as evaluate other resource potential on the block." A report from the U.S. Geological Survey said […]

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Venezuelan Officials Suspected of Turning Country into Global Cocaine Hub

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com. http://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelan-officials-suspected-of-turning-country-into-global-cocaine-hub-1431977784 U.S. probe targets No. 2 official Diosdado Cabello, several others, on suspicion of drug trafficking and money laundering ENLARGE Diosdado Cabello, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, is a leading target of U.S. investigations into alleged drug trafficking and money laundering by senior officials in the South American nation, a Justice Department official said. Mr. Cabello has denied wrongdoing. Photo: Marco Bello/Reuters U.S. prosecutors are investigating several high-ranking Venezuelan officials, including the president of the country’s congress, on suspicion that they have turned the country into a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the probes. An elite unit of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington and federal prosecutors in New York and Miami are building […]

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Venezuela says working on OPEC, non-OPEC deal to stabilize prices

CARACAS Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro said on Friday the country is working towards a new agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC nations to stabilize oil prices "We’re currently working on a deal that hopefully can materialize in June regarding an announcement between OPEC and some of the most important (oil) producers in the world to finish stabilizing the market in the second half of the year," he said after a meeting with Qatar’s emir. He said it was in the interests of the South American country and OPEC nations to stabilize prices around $100 per barrel in the medium term. (Reporting by Caracas newsroom; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)

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