The Russian Federation and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela strengthened bonds of friendship with the signing of eight agreements to develop the Carabobo area in the Faja del Orinoco (FPO), and agreed the construction of a thermal power plant in Venezuela, which will process 300 megawatts (MW). The plant will work with petroleum coke from oil production process.

Hugo Chávez, the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, said from the Miraflores Palace, the official seat of the Executive Office in Venezuela that, the establishment of Petrovictoria joint venture, the construction of oil infrastructure, projects to boost gas development, and the creation of a drilling company which is also specialized in rehabilitation of oil wells and rig repair are among the most important agreements.

“For the first time in history, a Russian company extracts oil in the Americas. This is due to geopolitical factors, because the Yankee Empire had an iron grip on this land. Now, there are companies from China, Russia and also from the United States,” said the Venezuelan Head of State.

President Chávez talked about early production of oil in the first well of Miranda 1 multiple directional drilling platform (macolla), run by Petromiranda, a joint venture, at the FPO. The estimated production capacity is 1,200 barrels per day of crude oil. “Oil production should start next year; however, we have moved forward and we are producing in Junín 6 Block with PetroMiranda. Here we have the world’s biggest oil reserves while Russia has one of the largest oil deposits in the world. We are two oil giants.”

“We are currently producing 3 million barrels of oil per day. We should produce 4 million barrels in 2014 and 6 million barrels in 2019. It is possible because we regained independence,” Chávez stated.

For its part, Rafael Ramírez, the People’s Minister of Petroleum and Mining and president of State-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), highlighted that the new bilateral agreements signed by Venezuela and Russia have a great scope. “We consider that the cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has reached a major breakthrough. It will provide a major boost to the projects we are currently working on at the FPO”.

Ramírez said that “the Petrovictoria joint venture is an important agreement that will allow us, Russian oil companies and PDVSA, to start production of 450,000 barrels of oil, in addition to the 450,000 barrels of oil produced by Petromiranda."

Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russia’s state-run Rosneft, reiterated its appreciation to the governments of the two countries and to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who allowed the development of large projects such as the exploration and development of the FPO.