Eastern Venezuela News

The final tanker in a flotilla of three Iranian fuel tankers docked at eastern Venezuela's Guaraguao port on Sunday, according to Refinitiv Eikon data and a person familiar with the matter, as President Nicolas Maduro promised to normalize fuel supply in the gasoline-starved country.The three tankers, which began arriving last week, brought some 820,000 barrels of fuel to the South American country, where severe shortages of gasoline—as well as unreliable power, water and cooking gas supplies—have led to a wave of protests in the neglected interior in recent weeks.The shortages come as state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela's once-formidable 1.3 million barrel per day (bpd) refining network has all but collapsed…

A sailor aboard an oil tanker anchored off Venezuela's coast died on Saturday, three people with knowledge of the incident said, marking the second death in less than a week involving personnel aboard ships serving the crisis-stricken OPEC nation.Juan Carlos Navarrete, a 58-year-old Cuban national serving as a helmsman aboard the Petion Panamax tanker, died after falling overboard while the tanker was anchored in Amuay Bay in western Venezuela, one of the sources, union leader Ivan Freites, said on Sunday.Neither Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA, nor its oil or information ministries, immediately responded to requests for comment.Both the Petion and its operator…

According to reports, Venezuela's state oil company has signed a deal with Brazilian companies, Eisa and Maua Jurong to build ten oil tankers in Venezuela. The joint venture will produce at least eight Panamax tankers, the largest type of vessel capable of navigating the locks of the Panama canal, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, said in a statement. PDVSA plans to increase its total fleet to 42 ships by 2012, the statement said. Last month, PDVSA announced it had signed a deal with the Brazilian company Andrade Gutierrez to build a dry dock in eastern Venezuela for the construction of oil tankers. Source: AP

Venezuela's state oil firm PDVSA could tender exploration and production licenses on seven offshore natural gas blocks in eastern Venezuela in 2006, according to a Business News: Americas report. In the Deltana Platform area there are five blocks, with two in the Gulf of Paria. There are plans to accelerate offshore exploitation, for which licenses are required. PDVSA will partner with Brazil's federal energy company Petrobras to explore four other blocks in the Mariscal Sucre region, according to the report. PDVSA recently awarded three offshore gas blocks in western Venezuela in the second phase of the Rafael Urdaneta project but plans to carry out more seismic studies in the area before restarting the project in 2007.