Royal Dutch Shell, PDVSA and Venezuela’s oil ministry have formed a joint coordination committee to develop natural gas projects in the oilfields of Monagas state, in northern Venezuela, Kallanish Energy learns.
The committee will aim to use and recover gas in the fields, taking advantage of Venezuela’s gas reserves – ranked eighth-largest in the world. The parties discussed last week opportunities and strengths of oil and gas production in the region.
“We have been considering some forms of financing that will allow us, later this year, to take proper actions to reduce gas flaring associated with oil,” said PDVSA’s vice president of E&P, Nelson Ferrer.
The synergy resulted from PDVSA’s staff specialization in gas and Shell’s experience in handling situations similar to gas venting and flaring in other countries will ramp up gas injection into wells and shipment to the internal market, the ministry said.
“At the Vice Ministry of Gas we have a resolution ready on the exploitation of this important resource generated through venting and flaring. The operating companies will have a period of six months to introduce projects for the efficient use of this resource so strategic for the country,” said Douglas Sosa, from the oil ministry.
Details of the projects such as timeframe, capacity and required investment were not disclosed.
