MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russian top crude producer Rosneft expects oil output at its projects in Venezuela, where production has been stagnant in recent years, to reach 1 million barrels per day by 2019-2020, said Upstreamonline.
Venezuela, whose economy is heavily dependent on oil production, is hoping that new projects in the Orinoco crude belt will help increase output, Reuters reported. A statement from Rosneft cited president Igor Sechin, a long-standing ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as saying after a trip to Latin America last week that oil production at Rosneft's joint ventures in the Orinoco belt would reach 280,000 bpd in 2016 and rise further in 2017.
"Such dynamics of assets and production development would allow us to reach the level of at least 1 million bpd in 2019-2020," Sechin is quoted as saying at a conference.
Venezuela is the world's eleventh largest crude exporter but foreign companies operating there have faced price controls and currency devaluations along with threats of nationalisation, leading several to quit the country.
Lukoil and Surgutneftegas have announced that they were leaving the consortium of Russian oil companies in Venezuela, citing a need to focus on other projects, Reuters reported.
Currently, Rosneft and Gazprom Neft are jointly working in the Junin-6 consortium developing heavy oil in the Orinoco basin. Rosneft is also involved in another Orinoco block to run, Carabobo 2.
Earlier this month, Finance Minister Nelson Merentes said that Venezuela would produce an average 3.1 million bpd of oil in 2014, roughly similar to this year. Oil exports from the country are seen at 2.5 million bpd.
As MRC wrote before, Russian oil giant Rosneft is to pump nearly USD3 billion into developing a trio of oilfields in East Siberia. The Moscow-based behemoth is to spend 92 billion rubles (USD2.79 billion) on the three fields by 2015. The field developments are set to feed into the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline feeding Asian markets.
Rosneft became Russia's largest publicly traded oil company in March 2013 after the USD55 billion takeover of TNK-BP, which was Russia’s third-largest oil producer at the time.