Venezuela seeks investment from China for its oil
Venezuela's vice president and oil ministers are visiting China with the aim of securing investment in the country's energy industry, Bloomberg reported .
The move to further strengthen ties with China comes as the Biden administration seeks to forge a less hostile relationship with Caracas and has already drafted a proposal to ease sanctions if Venezuela meets some conditions.
“Should Venezuela take concrete steps to restore democracy, leading to free and fair elections, we are ready to provide corresponding sanctions relief,” a National Security Council spokesman said in August, quoted by Reuters.
Last year, the Biden administration gave Chevron a sanctions waiver so that the company could return to Venezuela and resume its manufacturing operations. The waiver was granted in the context of a global heavy crude crisis due to Western sanctions against Russia.
The US oil multinational is the only Western major authorized by the US to operate and export oil from Venezuela under a special license issued in November 2022.
According to the Bloomberg report, during the visit Vice President Delcy Rodriguez and Oil Minister Pedro Telechia will discuss possible joint ventures with Chinese energy companies to further expand China's presence in Venezuelan oil.
China is already Venezuela's biggest creditor, having given the country some $60 billion in oil-backed loans since 2007. Despite the loans, the country's oil production has been decimated by underinvestment, mismanagement and sanctions and fell to a 50-year low of 700,000 bpd last year. Production has improved this year, as have exports.
For the first half of 2023, Venezuelan oil exports averaged nearly 15 percent growth over the same period a year earlier and averaged 670,000 bpd, according to data and documents.
Exports continued to increase in July but then fell sharply in August due to PDVSA's inability to maintain production of two heavy crude upgraders.
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The article Venezuela seeks investment from China for its oil comes from Scenarios Economics .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-venezuela-cerca-gli-investimenti-della-cina-per-il-proprio-petrolio/ on Wed, 06 Sep 2023 11:00:06 +0000.