Venezuela has, by far, the largest recoverable oil reserves in the world. Italy's ENI signs on.

[Peace Patriot]

President Chavez just signed a $17 billion oil development project with Italian oil firm, ENI.

ENI's CEO said it is "a dream come true" for his company, after agreeing to the 60/40 split of the profits, favoring Venezuela and its social programs (--a condition that prompted Exxon Mobil to walk out the talks a while back*).

ENI also signed an MOU with Venezuela for construction of a 1,000 MW thermoelectric plant in the eastern Venezuelan state of Sucre.

Venezuela's oil reserves were recently estimated by the USGS to be twice Saudi Arabia's and the largest in the world.

----

"Chavez noted that the U.S. Geological Survey recently put the amount of recoverable heavy crude in the Orinoco Belt at 513 billion barrels, meaning Venezuela holds the world’s biggest oil reserves.

"That U.S. government agency said in its assessment, released Friday, that that oil region of eastern Venezuela was the largest accumulation its technicians had ever assessed.

"PDVSA had earlier estimated that the Orinoco Belt had 1.3 trillion barrels of oil but that only 280 billion was technically recoverable.

"But the USGS study, the first to provide a precise estimate of the amount of oil technically recoverable with current technology and methods, says the area is twice as crude-rich and therefore puts Venezuela’s reserves well ahead of Saudi Arabia’s total of 266 billion barrels."

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=351190&CategoryId=10717


-----------------------------------------

*(Exxon Mobil--the richest corporation on earth--walked out of the talks in a snit, because they could not have it all, and would have been forced to pay for kids' schoolbooks and lunch programs and land reform in Venezuela. To punish the school children, Exxon Mobil then went into a "first world" court (in London) and tried to seize $12 billion of Venezuela's international cash reserves and assets, but lost that battle. Will the Pentagon get them the prize--all of the profits, nothing for the kids, the elderly, poor--that they could not achieve in honest bargaining? I think that's the plan, cuz the $100+ BILLION of U.S. taxpayer money being poured into the Colombian military and yet more billions being poured into a big expansion of the U.S. military in Colombia, ain't for "drug trafficking" or FARC guerrillas, in my opinion. Those kind of bucks are for oil wars.)

[Judi Lynn]

1. Yes, the BIG money being dumped into Colombia by the boatload,

well over half a billion each year, is unfathomable. Your point is probably right on target.

They are the third largest recipient of US taxpayers' hard earned dollars, and STILL have created the 2nd largest humanitarian crisis in the entire world, right after Sudan.

[EFerrari]

2. We seem to be funding murder in Colombia.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Typo in my post. It's not $100 billion in U.S. aid to Colombia; it's more like $10 billion.

But that's still a lot of smack. (Sometimes the zeroes just all run run together when you're talking multi-millions, billions and trillions of dollars.) $6 to $7 billion from the Bushwhacks. $4 more billion committed for Colombia, I believe, in this new U.S./Colombia military agreement. But I don't think that counts a lot of budget items, such as covert CIA ops and USAID bullshit in support of the "war," Blackwater's SUVs and stuff like that, nor the costs of the new U.S. military occupation of Colombia, using SEVEN military bases, re-building at least one of them, infusion of USAF planes and pilots, and USN ships, as well as high tech surveillance equipment and weaponry, and use of any and all civilian infrastructure, with full diplomatic immunity. We've got a war on in Colombia, in case nobody's noticed. It's already extremely expensive. Think what that money could have been used for! And it's going to get more expensive, in every way, not just in taxpayer dollars, if they Diebold Obama out of office in 2012 and put somebody in there like Dick Cheney who wants control of Colombia's neighbors' oil (Venezuela, largest oil reserves in the world, and Ecuador).

I've seen 20% and 11% as the amount by which Obama's 2011 budget cuts Colombia funding, but it's still about $500 million for next year alone (half military/ half "civilian'). The "war" continues.

[protocol rv]

4. I have a friend who used to work for Exxon in Venezuela

She says the litigation case is still taking place. And the Exxon management thinks they will win it. Maybe you are confused.

[protocol rv]

5. ENI isn't hiring

It's interesting, is is not? I live in Caracas, and many friends talked to people in ENI to see if they are hiring, or think there will be hiring. Those Italians have a nice office near the Chinese embassy, in Las Mercedes, and they are very polite, but everybody I talked to says they say they're not sure if they will hire anybody yet, and they are waiting to sign more papers with PDVSA. This is the problem with these announcements you read in the press in Venezuela, they announce this memorandum, that memorandum, and in the end the foreign company sits there, and PDVDA sits over there, 1000 meters away, each in their offices, and there is no real activity.

And the bad part is the low wages PDVSA is paying, they are the lowest in the hemisphere. So one has to somehow get the job with the foreign company, and then they have to send you to work in the joint venture, and convince PDVSA to accept to pay for the foreign company employee. And this is difficult. This means a skilled professional can accept low pay from PDVSA (plus you are forced to join their PSUV, Chavez' new united party), or you can try to see if somehow you get a job with the multinational, or you can leave the country. And most of us, I guess, will leave the country. Many are going to Canada, or Colombia, or USA, where the pay is more decent, and a middle class person doesn't have to sit in front of the TV and be insulted by the president and his followers all the time because one is educated and wants to be more than a buhonero selling hot dogs and arepas downtown.

And the famous high reserves we have will stay down in the ground. So you keep quoting those numbers, and I will, as long as I stay in the country, remind you there is no oil production, and the money we have from the old wells is going to buy weapons and pay the Cubans to change light bulbs.