Venezuelan probe to blame ex-ministers for opening up oil sector

Caracas (Platts)--31Mar2006

Venezuelan lawmakers will next week present a report blaming former oil
ministers and top executives at state oil company PDVSA for the opening up of
the country's oil industry to foreign investment in the 1990s, legislators
said Friday.

Rodrigo Cabezas, president of the special commission set up in May 2005
to investigate the oil opening, said in a statement from the National Assembly
official results will be announced in detail next Tuesday. He added, however,
that the probe blames "ex-presidents of PDVSA, ex-ministers and other
officials."

Although the investigation will only establish political responsibility,
the left-wing government of President Hugo Chavez could use the results to try
to establish criminal responsibility through the courts, which are stacked
with pro-Chavez judges. "It will be necessary for the relevant bodies to
establish penal responsibility against those ex-presidents of PDVSA that
permitted this ransack," said Nancy Perez, vice-president of the legislature's
Energy and Mines Commission, in a statement.

The probe's mandate was to analyze the effects of granting operating
contracts on some 32 marginal fields to foreign oil companies in three
licensing rounds in the 1990s, as well as four extra-heavy crude oil upgrading
projects based in the Orinoco Belt.

The probe was in response to government claims that foreign oil companies
avoided taxes and did not adhere to their contract terms, and that the oil
opening was equivalent to a process of "de-nationalization and tax fraud."
Despite preparing a preliminary report last year, lawmakers failed to release
final results before the legislative calendar was interrupted by parliamentary
elections in December, which saw Chavez supporters winning all 167 seats. A
new special commission was appointed in January to approve the final report.

For more information, take a trial to Platts Oilgram News at
http://oilgramnews.platts.com.


 

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