PDVSA has invested more in exploration and production in the Barinas Apure Oil Basin, whose subsoil accumulates a large part of the types of crude oil that feed the El Palito Refinery, which began construction in 1954 and began operations on June 23, 1960.
The Barinas Apure Basin was "none" from investments for exploration, maintenance and production survey, partly because eyes turned towards heavy and extra-heavy crudes from the Monagas and Anzoátegui states of the Orinoco Oil Belt.
The magnificent father book of oil data, created in 1959 by the founder of Opec, Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, called Petróleo y Otros Datos Estadísticos, PODE, from 2013, the last one available because despite being prepared by the Ministry of Petroleum it was it remains on their PCs and they have never published it again, reveals that the production of the Barinas Apure basin was 85.000 barrels per day in 2004, to later decline to 41.000 barrels in 2013.
Currently, Barinas Apure's production is around 4.000 barrels per day and PDVSA's efforts are directed towards 20.000 barrels, that is, at least half the flow achieved in 2013.
The task is not easy but it is urgent. The calls of President Nicolás Maduro and the efforts of his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, to achieve peace in Colombia are key, since the most unusual vices, thefts and crimes that hinder production efforts frequently arrive from the neighboring country.
Even though the national refining system operates in its entirety in gasoline, it produces around 90.000 barrels which, due to fewer queues at service stations, is a volume that is still below needs, but is close to demand of the country's vehicle fleet.
And it is urgent to raise oil production because little progress is made in the repairs of the refineries if it is not possible to supply the diets of the refineries, because the biggest problem of the national refining system continues to be the insufficiency of crude oil.
So much so, that in addition to light and medium crude oil from the Barinas Apure Oil Basin, El Palito is also fed with Mesa30 oil from northern Monagas. However, the reactivation of the Puerto La Cruz Refinery began to request this crude, threatening the Puerto Cabello refinery.
Overall, with the improvement work carried out by the workers' productive councils in the national refining system, including El Palito, national demand is currently around 400.000 barrels of oil per day, but the refining system is supplied with around 240.000 barrels; the rest, about 500.000 barrels, are for export.
The new picture of improvements in production and refining in the country has as one of its origins the search for greater efficiency in PDVSA's core operations through the development of oil basins, thus called organizational geological units that are intended to couple, with more precision, the types of oil, its transportation and storage, to the requirements of each refinery.
The so-called core operations in oil jargon are the cardinal tasks of oil exploration, production, improvement, and refining, a whole interdependent chain that requires integrating extraction, storage, and transportation technologies; as well as refineries and upgraders, to oil found and extracted from oil basins.
Oil, by its relative density, is divided into light (greater than 30° API), heavy (less than 16° API) and extra-heavy (less than 8° API). Each type or basket of crude oil is destined for its respective refinery, a physical space where the physical separation or conversion processes necessary to transform hydrocarbons into refined products (fuels and specialties) take place.
Venezuela has a national refining system made up of six refineries: the Paraguaná Refining Center (CRP), made up of the Amuay and Cardón refineries, on the Paraguaná peninsula in Falcón state; Bajo Grande, in Zulia state; the El Palito Refinery, in Carabobo state; and the Oriente Refining Complex, made up of the Puerto La Cruz and San Roque Refineries, in Anzoátegui state.
Even though each refinery processes certain types of oil according to their API degrees, sulfur content and metals, what dominates in the national refining system is the processing of light and medium oil. Four upgraders, located in Puerto La Cruz, are used to treat the heavy and extra-heavy oil from the Belt.
The upgraders increase the API gravity of the crude in order to obtain a more economically attractive oil. This is achieved mainly with the reduction of heavy hydrocarbons in its composition. One of its products is coke, traded in the international market and which are the black mountains visible when driving on the highway in front of the Puerto La Cruz Refinery.
Along this line of action, the Ministry of Petroleum, as the governing body in hydrocarbons policy, has created the oil basins. One is Offshore, which accumulates, for now, proven reserves of 449 million barrels, without a doubt very, very below the actual volume of crude oil deposited in that marine subsoil if one takes into account that, next door, in the Block Stabroex, from our future ninth flag star, Essequibo, Exxon Mobil found 9.600 million barrels of oil at 32 degrees API.
Another is the Oriente Oil Basin, which also serves the Puerto La Cruz Refinery, but at the moment it takes light and medium crudes from the Monagas borte which, as we said, sends them to the El Palito Refinery in Puerto Cabello.
For now, this is the case, since Pdvsa has given priority and put its operational potential to the search for and extraction of light crudes with low sulfur content found in the Apure-Barinas Oil Basin, which are the diet that, since its birth, is destined to feed the El Palito Refinery. Lastly, the Western Oil Basin, which includes Zulia and Falcón.
In order to undertake and concretize the oil basins as functional organizational levels, for improvement in the types and management of crude oil that feeds the refineries and upgraders, PDVSA gives impetus to the already active workers' productive councils, which systematize through research tasks the experiences and technologies applied to industry.
The company also created the business model Comprehensive Hydrocarbon Services Agreements, in which national and international private companies participate that supply everything from equipment to core activities.
It is then expected that with the organizational geological units of oil basins, the types of crude oil are more perfectly matched to the diet requested by each refinery, that is, there is a vertical relationship between production and the infrastructures in charge of transforming oil into products. of mass consumption, such as gasoline, lubricants and fertilizers.
