DoE explores oil supply deal with Venezuela
Thursday, February 08, 2007
By MYRNA M. VELASCO
The Department of Energy (DoE) has opened negotiations for a bilateral oil supply deal with oil-rich Venezuela, but prospects of procurement has been saddled both by logistics and by shipment concerns.
"Venezuela has offered oil before, but the problem still is the difficulty of transporting that oil here," Energy Secretary Raphael P.M. Lotilla has noted.
The energy chief added there have been previous moves to tailor-fit local refineries in processing heavy crude, which is the classification of Venezuelan oil product.
"Venezuelan oil is heavy crude and we don’t have yet the facilities to refine heavy crude. That’s why when we were talking about expansion for both Petron and Shell upgrading - that was intended to enable them to refine heavy crude," Lotilla stressed.
Apart from the Latin American oil producer, the energy department also held exploratory talks with Kuwait and Angola; but the same dilemma on long shipment routes was raised.
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