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Chavez playing dangerous game with oil output

AFP, CARACAS
Friday, Jun 02, 2006, Page 9

"Why have production and capacity plunged? Because of the lack of qualified personnel, and also due to insufficient investment and endemic corruption."

Robert Bottome, economist

Venezuela oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) is the spearhead of President Hugo Chavez's revolution, but his ambitious development projects have weakened the state-owned company, industry experts said.

Oil production in Venezuela, which is hosting the OPEC summit that began yesterday, is far below its official cartel quota because PDVSA still hasn't recovered from crucial manpower losses after a 2002 strike, and because it has been used to fund Chavez's social and political development projects.

Caracas has an official OPEC oil production quota of 3.2 million barrels per day (bpd), and has set an ambitious target of 3.4 million bpd for the end of this year, of which 2.38 million barrels should come from PDVSA.

But according to the International Energy Agency and OPEC, current total Venezuelan production sits at just 2.6 million bpd, far below the target.

PDVSA does not publish independently audited corporate reports, making estimates difficult, and PDVSA officials was unavailable for interview despite requests to the company.

But analysts estimate its own production at just 1.5 million bpd. The rest of the country's production comes from joint ventures and domestic "strategic associations" with multinational oil companies.

PDVSA has succumbed to the political hurricane brought on by Chavez's ascent to power in 1999, and was especially crippled by the large anti-Chavez protests of December 2002 to January 2003, organized in part by PDVSA officials.

During the strike oil production was suspended and oil industry infrastructure damaged. According to Mazar al Shereidah, an oil industry expert, "400,000 barrels a day have been lost forever, and the loss to the oil sector has been US$12.5 billion."

In retaliation for the strike, more than 18,000 PDVSA staff, half its workforce, were sacked.

"With such a hemorrhage, it is not possible to fully recover production. They have recovered 80 to 90 percent of the level then, but without any progress since," said a European expert.

"Why have production and capacity plunged? Because of the lack of qualified personnel, and also due to insufficient investment and endemic corruption," said Robert Bottome, an economist at the magazine Veneconomy.

Like many of those exiled by "Chavism," Horacio Medina, a former senior PDVSA manager now living in Miami paints a somber picture of the oil giant.

He sees it "in fundamental decline, controlled by ideological agents and having lost its position in the oil market."

He said PDVSA "has hardly made any investment these recent years in maintenance and in drilling wells, while it should be spending US$4 billion a year just to maintain production."

Another sign that PDVSA is in bad straits is the rising number of accidents, explosions and deaths, said a European oil industry official who noted PDVSA used to be within international averages for accidents.

"The problem resides also in the actual completion of announced projects, at only about 25 percent" he said.

The supposed sensational success of the government's "Siembra Petrolera" [Sowing the Oil] plan, investing US$56 billion to push national production up to 5.8 million bpd by 2012, is "an illusion," he said.

To analysts, PDVSA's weakening is driven not only by its use to finance Chavez's sweeping social development efforts and his aggressive "oil diplomacy" across Latin America, but also the employment of the firm's own technology and engineers to handle these programs.

The "missions" created in 2003 -- offering health care, housing and subsidized shops for the poor, Chavez's electoral base -- are getting US$8.2 billion this year from PDVSA, up from US$4.8 billion last year and US$4.3 billion the year before.

By holding oil prices at around US$50 a barrel for certain "friends," Chavez has accumulated also their obligations -- some US$17 billion to US$19 billion worth, according to oil expert Alberto Quiroz Corradi.

Chavez ships discounted oil to allies like Cuba and to cities like Managua. He has also proposed to help develop Bolivia develop its gas resources and to refine Ecuador's oil.

"That is all possible with a current margin of over US$40 dollars [a barrel], but it will suffer if oil prices fall from US$60 to US$40 dollars" because subsidized operations will collapse and they will start losing money, according to the European oil industry official.
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