Orinoco
Felipe Bayón, GeoPark’s chief executive officer, said that «for extra-heavy crude, diluent is absolutely essential».
GeoPark Ltd., an oil producer backed by Colombia’s Gilinski Group, is in talks with the Venezuelan state-owned energy company to supply a light oil product used to dilute heavy crude.
The company headquartered in Bogotá is this week negotiating with Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) for shipments of the product, called diluent, while it prepares to begin production in the Orinoco Oil Belt, said GeoPark’s chief executive officer, Felipe Bayón, in an interview at an oil and gas conference in Caracas.
Access to diluent is crucial for producing crude in the Orinoco Oil Belt, where the oil is too heavy to flow through pipelines without being mixed with a diluent. Other companies setting up operations in the region as part of the U.S.-led effort to revive production will be watching closely as GeoPark negotiates PDVSA supply contracts.
“For the extra-heavy crudes, the diluent is absolutely essential,” said Bayón.
The most widely used diluent in Venezuela is a light variety of petroleum produced by PDVSA. A more expensive option is imported naphtha, a liquid product derived from oil, according to Bloomberg Línea.
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