By Mircely Guanipa Marianna Parraga
MARACAY/HOUSTON, Jan 4 (Archyde.com) – Operational bottlenecks in a key shipping channel in Venezuela are slowing Chevron’s efforts to load tankers at one of its four joint ventures and bring heavy crude to the United States, three people familiar with said on Wednesday. with the matter. With the aim of encouraging talks between the government of Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan opposition, Washington authorized the last major US company still operating in Venezuela in November to expand production and resume oil exports. But a plan to quickly move heavy oil stored by the Petroboscán joint venture, which Chevron operates in conjunction with state oil company PDVSA, faces delays due to a lack of dredging in the Lake Maracaibo navigation channel, the people said. A dredge is often needed to clear river and lake beds and remove mud, weeds and trash for ships to transit. Shallow waters in the canal caused an unrelated ship carrying scrap metal to run aground in December. Since then, Petroboscán has instructed vessels to limit their draft after loading at the Bajo Grande oil terminal. The navigation channel of Lake Maracaibo, in the northwest of the country, is suitable only for loading ships with a draft of up to 9.8 meters, said one of the people. That means only about 250,000 barrels of Boscán heavy crude can move through the channel linking Bajo Grande to the Caribbean Sea at a time. In a sign that Chevron hopes to quickly expand its operations, the oil producer has begun offering positions for contract management and scheduling of Venezuelan shipments. The company is hiring to revive operations that have been largely dormant for years, particularly its marketing and trading divisions, which will handle oil exports for its own refineries in the United States and others. Chevron began preparing to restart operations at its joint ventures in Venezuela last year while filing a license application with the US Treasury Department, following an agreement with PDVSA. The company wants to form a commercial team to market oil from Venezuela and expand its role in the four projects. PDVSA and Chevron did not respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Mircely Guanipa in Maracay and Marianna Parraga in Houston)