By Corina Pons and Marianna Parraga
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA is
telling customers of its joint ventures to deposit oil sales proceeds in
an account recently opened at Russia's Gazprombank AO, according to
sources and an internal document seen by Reuters on Saturday.
PDVSA's move comes after the United States imposed tough, new
financial sanctions on Jan. 28 aimed at blocking Venezuela's President
Nicolas Maduro's access to the country's oil revenue.
Supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader and self-proclaimed
interim president Juan Guaido said recently that a fund would be
established to accept proceeds from sales of Venezuelan oil.
The United States and dozens of other countries have recognized
Guaido as the nation's legitimate head of state. Maduro has denounced
Guaido as a U.S. puppet seeking to foment a coup.
PDVSA also has begun pressing its foreign partners holding stakes in
joint ventures in its key Orinoco Belt producing area to formally decide
whether they will continue with the projects, according to two sources
with knowledge of the talks.
The joint venture partners include Norway's Equinor ASA, U.S.-based Chevron Corp and France's Total SA.
"We would like to make formal your knowledge of new banking
instructions to make payments in U.S. dollars or euros," wrote PDVSA's
finance vice president, Fernando De Quintal, in a letter dated Feb. 8 to
the PDVSA unit that supervises its joint ventures.
Even after a first round of financial sanctions in 2017, PDVSA's
joint ventures managed to maintain bank accounts in the United States
and Europe to receive proceeds from oil sales. They also used
correspondent banks in the United States and Europe to shift money to
PDVSA's accounts in China.
State-run PDVSA several weeks ago informed customers of the new
banking instructions and has begun moving the accounts of its joint
ventures, which can export crude separately. The decision was made amid
tension with some of its partners, which have withdrawn staff from
Caracas since U.S. sanctions were imposed in January.
The sanctions gave U.S. oil companies working in Venezuela, including
Chevron and oil service firms Halliburton Co, General Electric Co's
Baker Hughes and Schlumberger NV, a deadline to halt all operations in
the South American country. The European Union has encouraged member
countries to recognize a new temporary government led by Guaido until
new elections can be held. Europe also has said it could impose
financial sanctions to bar Maduro from having access to oil revenue
coming from the region.
Maduro has overseen an economic collapse in the oil-rich OPEC country
that has left many Venezuelans malnourished and struggling to find
medicine, sparking the exodus of an estimated 3 million Venezuelans.
Sanctions designed to deprive Maduro of oil revenue have left an
armada of loaded oil tankers off Venezuela's coasts that have not been
discharged by PDVSA's customers due to payment issues. The bottleneck
has caused problems for PDVSA to continue producing and refining oil
without imported diluents and components.
PDVSA also ordered its Petrocedeno joint venture with Equinor and
Total to halt extra-heavy oil output and upgrading due to a lack of
naphtha needed to make the production exportable, as the sanctions
prohibit U.S. suppliers of the fuel from exporting to Venezuela.
(Reporting by Marianna Parraga in Mexico City and Corina Pons in Caracas; editing by Jonathan Oatis and G Crosse)
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