Statoil Wants To Join PDVSA Caribbean Sea Project

Statoil, Norway's largest oil company, has said that it will bid to be a partner with Venezuela's state oil company in an offshore natural gas project that would entail it investing up to three billion dollars.

Statoil is interested in investing in Venezuela's Deltana Platform project in the Caribbean Sea. The field is between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago.

“We are ready for a very significant role,” Statoil's Venezuelan chief Marcel Kramer told reporters. “We've created an outlet for liquid natural gas in the US and we can use outlet for Venezuela gas as well.”

Venezuela is counting on the Deltana to boost its natural gas reserves, the largest in Latin America and the seventh largest in the world. If natural gas is found in large enough quantities, commercial output would begin in 2007, producing a billion cubic feet of day for the domestic and international market.

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