Venezuela oil recovery would take months--strikers

10 Jan 2003 18:51 www.alertnet.org

NEW YORK, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Oil production in Venezuela would need four months to recover to near normal levels if the the 40-day-old strike were to end today, dissident state oil company executives said on Friday.

"In a couple of months maybe we can restore production by 50 percent, mainly of the light crude oil production, and in a period of four months, we might be in the level of 90 percent," Marco Rossi, a striking executive with Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Venezuela's state oil company told a teleconference call on Friday.

Venezuela was producing about 3.1 million barrels of crude per day before the strike.

The rebel PDVSA officials were making their case for the strike to the U.S. energy industry for the first time.

Venezuelan crude oil installations, including PDVSA's 940,000 bpd Amuay-Cardon plant, the western hemisphere's largest refinery complex, have been virtually stopped by the strike.

The strikers said that, because they did not have access to operations, it was difficult to confirm claims of ecological damage caused by the replacement of regular oil workers with people appointed by the government.

Opposition officials have said oil has been spilled during tanker loading operations in the western Lake Maracaibo production center and that such incidents have increased by "1,000 percent" since the beginning of the strike.

The labor turmoil has cut production by the world's No. 5 oil exporter, a leading supplier to the United States, and caused shortages of gasoline domestically.

The Chavez government says the strike has cut oil production to 600,000 bpd, while the opposition said on Friday production had fallen to 340,000 bpd.

The strikers said Venezuela has had to turn to alternative sources of petroleum products, including buying gasoline from Brazil and diesel from Malaysia.

PDVSA was seeking gasoline from the U.S. Gulf for late January, U.S. traders said on Thursday.

Strikers have vowed to continue the strike until leftist President Hugo Chavez leaves office.

Striking PDVSA workers have said government efforts to restart operations using replacement workers would fail, and that adequate production could only be resumed when striking employees returned.