Oil majors say some Venezuelan ports safe -PDVSA

www.forbes.com Reuters, 02.26.03, 3:17 PM ET

(Recasts, adds details, background) CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Several international oil majors have certified the safety of some Venezuelan ports, boosting government struggles to restore strike-hit crude exports, state oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) said on Wednesday. U.S. oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Texaco , France's TotalFinaElf, Norway's Statoil and Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch/Shell "have certified the operational security of Venezuelan shipping terminals dedicated to hydrocarbons commerce", a PDVSA statement said. Ship owners and oil companies had been concerned about Venezuelan ports due to potentially unsafe conditions created by workers enlisted by President Hugo Chavez to break an oil strike. Companies hired independent inspectors have been brought in to certify port conditions. Most of port audits were for the eastern port of Jose, where synthetic oil produced by foreign firms and PDVSA is produced. Some majors have already completed inspections there and begun lifting syncrude. PDVSA said Chevron Texaco will load its first tanker of PDVSA-produced oil since the strike started on Dec. 2. ChevronTexaco will load the Shino Ussa vessel from the western Bajo Grande terminal with 270,000 barrels of Boscan crude, PDVSA said on its Web site. ChevronTexaco said the company does not comment on day-to-day operations. Some smaller oil firms had already resumed loadings of PDVSA crude. In addition, China Oil has scheduled a Very Large Crude Carrier from the Jose port to China on March 3. Refiner Reliance has booked a VLCC from Jose to India, due to begin loading on March 26. Venezuela, normally the world's No. 5 oil exporter, shipped nearly 2.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude and products before the strike. The government says it has restored exports to about 1.5 million bpd and oil production to 2 million bpd. PDVSA employees fired by Chavez during the strike say output is closer to 1.5 million bpd, compared with 3.1 million bpd in November. (With reporting by Stefano Ambrogi in London)