Energy Relationships

Production and Exploration
Refineries
Orinoco Belt
Petrochemical
Natural Gas

Production and Exploration

Japan has an active participation in Venezuelan oil sector.  Teikoku Oil de Venezuela C.A. develops activities via operation agreements with Venezuelan government in Eastern Guarico and Sanvi-Guere field  (Anzoátegui) all at the east part of Venezuela.

Nipon Oil Exploration Inc. Is engaged in activities in La Ceiba in partnership with con Mobil Venezolana de Petróleo and Veba Oil de Venezuela. Those activities are aimed towards  exploring, producing and commercializing oil resources from that area of Venezuela.

Japanese Mitsubishi has partnership with other multinationals (Exxon and Shell) and with PDVSA (Venezuelan state oil corporation) in a project to produce and commercialize liquid natural gas (GNL) in eastern Venezuela.

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Refineries

Valcor Project (Currents Valorization – Puerto La Cruz Refinery)

The objective of this project is to produce unleaded gasoline  in the Puerto La Cruz refinery. In order to substitute conventional gasoline, supporting the policies of Venezuelan government . This projects also produces low sulfur diesel for distribution over the Latin American and Caribbean markets.

This project uses a credit line provided by The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), 70% direct and 30% via a pool of japanese banks. The japanese consortium JGC leads the constructon and start up of the process units, with financial support from Mitsubishi and Marubeni. The sign of the agreement was on march 13,  2001 and the completion time was set to 28 months, hence the project started operative stage in July 2003..

Orinoco Belt

The New Business and Planning Unit of PDVSA accepted an invitation for a joint participation with JGC in a research program sponsored by NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization). NEDO is a semi-governmental organization under Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry of Japan. The program consist on evaluating an application of a n innovative technology developed by JGC for an oil developing country. The name for the mentioned technology is GEFINERY, which is a process framework for heavy residuals, resulting in a cleaner fuel suitable for use on electricity generation. The study at Venezuela refers the the development of this framework using extra-heavy crude oil extracted from Orinoco belt, this is why PDVSA-ORINOCO BELT was designated as a main stage for efforts coordination in PDVSA.

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Petrochemical

During 1991 and 1992 there were sporadic sales to Japanese Firms such as Mitsui y Mitsubishi, volume of Urea and Ammoniac forwarded to South America. During 1993-1994 period, PEQUIVEN bought from Japan two lots of Sulfuric Acid and Fosforic Acid with 10 metric tons each. Addicionally , Mitsui Petrochemicals participates in the Hybrid (State owned- Private) firms Pequiven, Polinter and Propilven. Moreover, Mitsubishi partners Pequiven in the manufacture of methanol, the Joint Venture  "Metanol de Oriente – Metor, S.A", in Jose. During 1998, 1999 and 2000 Mitsubishi exported from Jose, a total 173,16 thousand metric tons of methanol to Japan. On the other hand, during 2001 y 2002 there were no petrochemical exports to Japan.

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Natural Gas

Mitsubishi Corporation was among the pool of companies selected to take part in the “Antonio José de Sucre” project. This project, located at the north of Paria Gulf, aims to developing the exploration and extraction of the Deltana platform Gas projects, these include the construction of a liquefied natural gas. Japanese Mitsubishi was awarded rights to have a share of 8% in the project , which is constituted by Royal Dutch Shell (30%) and Venezuela Government  60%.

The expected return of this project will be around US $ 3 billions.