Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said here Thursday that he has reached an agreement with Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao on a plan to boost Venezuela’s oil shipments to China to 1 million barrels per day next year.

“I proposed that given the global situation we study the possibility and we agreed to move up the target set in the strategic accord for 2013,” the leftist leader said to applause from a hundred or so national, provincial and local leaders at the Communist Party academy.

Talks on reaching that level of supply, building a Venezuelan refinery in Chinese territory and launching a joint venture for crude transport were the top items on the agenda during Chavez’s visit.

“Those three top strategic objectives already justify the working visit to China, but we have other political and geo-political interests to discuss with President Hu Jintao,” Chavez said shortly after landing Tuesday in Beijing for a visit that concluded Thursday.

Chavez said it was important for Chinese companies to increase investment in oil exploration in Venezuela to achieve the new supply target.

In that regard, Venezuela’s Energy and Mines minister, Rafael Ramirez, and top executives of state-owned oil company PDVSA met Wednesday with leaders of Chinese state oil firms CNPC and Sinopec to discuss current and future cooperation.

The talks, according to Venezuelan officials, also centered on a joint refinery project on Chinese territory capable of processing Venezuelan heavy crude into fuel and other derivatives.

But a potential snag in the project is that large amounts of oil are needed to supply it. More Chinese investment in oil production, therefore, is needed and some experts in Beijing have not ruled out the possibility of energy firms in other countries, such as France’s Total SA, joining the initiative.

According to Chavez, considering that Venezuela currently exports 1.5 million barrels per day to the United States, the goal of shipping 1 million bpd to China (in 2008 the total was 380,000 bpd) is reachable “and we’ll be in a position to raise that amount after 2010.”

The proposed Venezuelan-Chinese crude oil transport company also is part of plans to reduce reliance on the U.S. market, the destination for roughly half of the South American country’s oil production despite years of bilateral tensions.

“We’re diversifying our oil business. Even though we’re a small country, we’re an oil giant and China doesn’t have the reserves necessary to meet its needs,” Chavez said.

“God put the oil that China needs for the next 200 years in Venezuela. Before, the United States took our oil like a ‘vampire,” Chavez told the Communist Party leaders to rousing applause.

Source: Atheo News

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