Russia's largest oil company, Rosneft, may acquire 50 percent of Venezuelan state-own oil firm PdVSA's stake in a German refinery, a Russian business daily said on Friday.
Kommersant daily said Rosneft had started talks with PdVSA in April, though the deal has dragged on since BP also had its stake in German Ruhr Oel GmbH refinery.
As the troubled British oil giant has a preference in buying out PdVSA's stake, Russia had to settle the deal with BP. BP demanded the right to participate in developing the Arctic shelf in exchange for giving up its Ruhr Oel GmbH's option , Kommersant said.
Rosneft is currently in talks with BP over the joint Arctic deal.
In April, Venezuela and Russia reached an agreement to draft plans for Russia's National Oil Consortium to participate in the development of the Ayacucho-3 and Hunin-3 oil deposits in the Latin American country.
The National Oil Consortium (NNK) of Russian companies working in Venezuela includes Russian energy giant Gazprom, state-run crude producer Rosneft, Russian-British joint oil venture TNK-BP, Surgutneftegaz and LUKoil.
Venezuela is one of the largest oil producing countries in the world, with about 87 billion barrels of proven conventional oil reserves as of 2008. In addition, it has huge non-conventional oil deposits (heavy crude). Most of these deposits are located in the Orinoco oil belt.
MOSCOW, October 15 (RIA Novosti)
