Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA and Italy’s multinational oil firm Eni are considering options to transfer crude oil stored in the Petrosucre floating storage and offloading facility (FSO) on Venezuela’s eastern coast. Both companies suspended the facility’s operations in January 2019 when Washington began imposing sanctions on the South American country’s oil industry. It has been idle ever since.
Earlier this year, the FSO was leaning 8%, which created the risk of a spill of about 1.3 million barrels of Corocoro crude it stored. A technician managed to correct the problem in July, but other problems occurred, including a seawater leak that impacted the engine room. This latest problem is likely to be unfixable because the FSO’s bilge pumps were out of service.
Eni said that there was no risk of an oil spill and situations aboard the FSO were stable. The Italian company holds 74% of Petrosucre, while PDVSA owns the rest 74%. The FSO produced an average of 15,000 bpd of crude oil before the sanctions. An internal PDVSA document indicated that output was zero in March 2020.
Under the US sanctions and lack of competent staff, PDVSA has been struggling to maintain its facilities. In July, a large oil spill was reportedly believed to come from one of the company’s refineries. The spill affected one of the country’s most sensitive national parks and sparked concern about the environmental risks stemming from its ailing refining networks.
