Venezuela’s state oil company said on Friday it had purchased ConocoPhillips’ 40 percent stake in a joint natural gas venture with Chevron Corp.
State-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) said it would team up with Chevron to exploit the reserves in that area of Venezuela’s Deltana Platform.
PDVSA will control 61 percent of the joint venture, and Chevron 39 percent.
About 200 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves have been discovered, and the project is expected to produce around 21 million cubic meters per day.
The company did not disclose details on compensation.
Charlie Rowton, a ConocoPhillips spokesman at its Houston headquarters confirmed the sale, but declined to discuss the price or other terms. He said the sale is unrelated to separate World Bank arbitration over the nationalization of ConocoPhillips’ assets in heavy oil projects.
ORINOCO OIL BELT
The government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez nationalized four major oil projects in 2007, including ConocoPhillips’ operations in the nation’s heavy-oil-producing Orinoco Oil Belt, after the two parties failed to agree on terms for a minority stake.
But ConocoPhillips continued to explore for offshore natural gas deposits and had worked with Chevron since 2003 in the Deltana Platform.
Chevron spokesman Scott Walker said the San Ramon, California-based company is pleased with the deal.
“We look forward to working with PDVSA on developing this project,” Walker said in an e-mailed statement.
Chavez’s government said last week that it nnight sue ConocoPhillips for exercising an option to purchase PDVSA’s 50 percent stake in a joint refinery in Sweeny, Texas.
ConocoPhillips says PDVSA has failed deliver heavy crude as required under contract to the refinery since the beginning of the year, while PDVSA says it stopped shipping 166,000 barrels of oil a day to comply with OPEC production cuts.
Rowton declined to comment on Friday on a possible lawsuit.
UNPRECEDENTED PACE: Micron Technology has announced plans to expand manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a new chip plant in Miaoli Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom. The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement. It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said. As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion
ABOVE LEGAL REQUIREMENT: The Ministry of Economic Affairs is prepared if LNG supply is disrupted, with more than the legal requirement of 11 days of inventory Taiwan has largely secured liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies through May and arranged about half of June’s supply, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. Since the Middle East conflict began on Feb. 28, Taiwan’s LNG inventories have remained more than 12 days, exceeding the legal requirement of 11 days, indicating no major supply concerns for domestic gas and electricity, Kung said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. The ministry aims to increase the figure to 14 days by the end of next year, he said. While one or two LNG or crude oil shipments for May
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
Memory chip stocks extended their losses yesterday after Alphabet Inc’s Google publicized research that could allow more efficient use of the storage needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, South Korean leaders in the market, fell more than 6 percent and about 5 percent respectively in Seoul. In the US, Micron Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Sandisk Corp slid more than 2 percent in pre-market trading, after they all closed lower on Wednesday. Memory companies have been on a tear in recent months as the rapid development of AI infrastructure triggered a spike in chip
RSS