10-08-09 State-owned oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela, or PdVSA, said it completed a joint reserves assessment with Spain's Repsol-YPF at the Junin 7 block in the Orinoco Belt.
The assessment, which also involved certification firm Ryder Scott, "was based on information from five wells drilled in the decade of the 1980s ... (and) from five new wells drilled between 2008 and 2009," PdVSA said.

The assessment of Junin 7 is part of the international certification process being completed by PdVSA, along with about a dozen foreign companies, of Venezuela's reserves, which have been estimated on a preliminary basis at 314 bn barrels of crude, making them the world's largest.
"The Junin 7 block covers 502 sq km (194 sq miles)" and the crude it contains has "an API grade (a standard set by the American Petroleum Institute) range of between 7 and 8," PdVSA said.

The Orinoco Belt, located in east-central Venezuela, is believed to hold the world's largest petroleum reserves, with most of the oil heavy and extra-heavy crude that is more expensive to refine because it requires additional processing.
Repsol-YPF and PdVSA signed a contract July 29 in Caracas under which the Venezuelan state-owned company will supply 1 mm barrels of crude that will be refined in Spain, as well as an agreement laying the foundation for future exploration at Junin. These agreements and several others were signed during Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos's three-day visit to Caracas.

According to PdVSA, Junin 7 has estimated original oil in place (OOIP) of 30.4 bn barrels of crude.
On May 1, 2007, the government turned over control of the oil-rich Orinoco Belt to PdVSA, stripping foreign oil companies of their last remaining majority stakes in petroleum projects in Venezuela. The new joint venture arrangement granted PdVSA an average stake of 78.3 % in operations in the Orinoco Belt, which accounts for production of close to 600,000 bpd of crude.

Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and the fourth-largest supplier of crude to the United States, the destination for almost 1.5 mm bpd of the 3 mm bpd the country produces, according to official figures.