Venezuela’s first complex for upgrading extra-heavy crudes from the Orinoco Belt began operating earlier this year. The facility is located inside Jose Industrial Complex, in Anzoátegui State.
The launching of this plant means that Petrozuata, a pioneer firm in the development of the Orinoco Belt, has completed the first installation capable of transforming extra-heavy 9º API crude into a much lighter crude of around 22º API. The cost of the project came to $2.2 billion.
Petrozuata is starting operations as an oil company comprising production, transportation, upgrading and a number of separate business units that will help support the company’s goals. Petrozuata is a strategic association formed by Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) (49.9 percent) and United States-based Conoco (50.1 percent) with total investments of around $3 billion. Petrozuata is involved in developing new technologies for exploiting the extra-heavy crudes extracted from the Orinoco Belt. To cite one example, in the area of production, the company is using novel drilling techniques involving multilateral wells combined with multiphase pumps.
The Upgrading Unit at Petrozuata has the capacity to process 120,000 barrels of crude per day that will yield 103,000 barrels per day of lighter crude and other products such as sulfur (145 tons per day), coke (3,000 tons per day) and liquefied petroleum gas (3,900 barrels per day).
The first shipment of 450,000 barrels of the upgraded, synthetic crude was shipped in March to a Conoco refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
The project is one of four joint ventures between the state oil company and foreign investors. Besides the Conoco partnership, PDVSA has formed joint ventures to make synthetic crude with Exxon Mobil; a partnership of France’s TotalFinaElf S.A. and Statoil A.S. of Norway; and a partnership of Texaco Inc. and Phillips Petroleum. PDVSA expects the four projects to total as much as $14 billion in capital investments.
Over the next year Conoco and PDVSA will study the feasibility of building another upgrading plant to handle more crude from the Orinoco Belt.
The Orinoco Belt is said to contain an estimated 270 billion barrels of recoverable, extra-heavy crude reserves of which only 6 percent have been tapped.
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