CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela is creating its own oil-field services company to reduce dependence on foreign contractors, the country’s top energy official said yesterday.
Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said the state-run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) is starting its own version of Houston oil-field services company Halliburton Co. to provide services within the oil-producing country.
“We’re going to create our own firm, called PSVSA Services,” Mr. Ramirez said during a televised interview. “We can have our own Halliburton, ours, the Bolivarian one.”
President Hugo Chavez aims to make Venezuela’s oil industry self-sufficient as he advances his Bolivarian Revolution, a movement named after South American independence hero Simon Bolivar. PDVSA currently depends on foreign companies, including Halliburton and Schlumberger Ltd., to maintain petroleum production.
Mr. Ramirez said the new company would offer services in other Latin American nations such as Colombia, Nicaragua and Ecuador.
PDVSA has declared an “operational emergency” because of an international shortage of oil rigs that has driven up costs and prevented it from hiring enough rigs for drilling.
Some industry watchdogs have said Venezuela’s crude output is falling, partly because of the rig shortage. The International Energy Agency in Paris, for example, estimates that oil output in Venezuela has fallen to 2.37 million barrels a day, down from 2.6 million barrels per day a year ago.
But Mr. Ramirez denied that output was down: “Our production is not affected.” He said the country, a major supplier of oil to the U.S., is producing 3.1 billion barrels of oil a day.
Mr. Chavez’s government has struck a deal with China National Petroleum Corp. to begin assembling drilling rigs in Venezuela, a major part of PDVSA’s plan to gain its own rig fleet. Production of the rigs is expected to begin within two years.
Mr. Ramirez said Venezuela already has obtained 13 Chinese-made oil drills.
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