PetroSA may develop offshore natural gas in Venezuela

PetroSA, South Africa's state-owned oil company, may work with Petroleos de Venezuela to develop offshore natural gas reserves at the Deltana Block 1 under an agreement signed.
PetroSA will also work with PdVSA to revive output at two declining oil fields in eastern Venezuela and is studying the possibility of developing an export terminal for compressed natural gas, Eulogio del Pino, vice president of exploration and production at the Venezuelan state oil company, told in Porlamar, Venezuela.

"With PetroSA we have a lot of activities and three projects already in development," del Pino said. "We're evaluating the possibility of setting up a floating production unit to produce compressed natural gas."
Venezuela, the largest oil producer in South America, is building closer ties with African countries and signed eight agreements during the second Africa-South America Summit on Margarita Island. Agreements and memoranda of understandings were signed with Sudan, Mauritania, Cape Verde, Niger, Mali and Gambia, del Pino said.

Venezuela may ship crude to Mauritania and will evaluate the prospects for renovating two idled refineries in the North African nation, Oil and Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez told after the summit.
PetroSA and PdVSA will invest about $ 400 mm over the next four years to work two mature oil fields and look to boost output to 30,000 bpd from 3,000 bpd now, del Pino said.

PdVSA is also interested in becoming a partner with PetroSA in a storage and blending terminal for crude oil near Cape Town that would operate as a strategic stop on the way to the Asian markets, del Pino said.
"We're interested in using storage capacity in South Africa -- they have more than 50 mm barrels of capacity along our route to Asia," del Pino said. "We also want to blend light crudes there from Angola and Nigeria with our heavy crude to bring a higher quality project to the Asian market."