Caracas.- During the Council of Ministers held on Friday 15, Hugo Chávez, the President of the  Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, monitored the progress of the construction of the General-in-Chief José Francisco Bermúdez Northeastern Gas Pipeline, located in the northeastern Venezuelan state of Sucre, via a satellite transmission. The gas pipeline is the longest in South America, and it extends approximately 740 kilometers (460 miles) over water and land.

This large natural gas project will transport gas from the Gran Mariscal Sucre Project, which will supply gas to Venezuela’s domestic market, that is to say to the thermal power plants and the petrochemical, steel and domestic sectors. 

“This pipeline will meet Venezuela’s domestic gas needs, as well as the gas required by thermal power plants, blast furnaces of steelmaker Sidor and the petrochemical industry. Venezuela will become a world power,” the Venezuelan Head of State said.

Meanwhile, PDVSA Gas President, Orlando Chacín, said: “We are supervising the longest gas pipeline that is being built in South America. This gas pipeline has a  36-inch pipe laying stretching nearly 34 miles, from the city of Cumaná to the dock of Cariaco, in the state of Sucre.”

Chacín said that the gas pipeline will transport the first 300 million cubic feet of gas (MMcf) by the end of the year from Dragón Field, in the Mariscal Sucre Project,  with an estimated investment of $1.6 billion.

Eulogio Del Pino, PDVSA’s Vice President of Exploration and Production, said: “The pipes used in the 460-mile gas pipeline have been made by two companies owned by PDVSA Industrial, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela. They are 100 percent Venezuelan.” 

Proven reserves
The President Hugo Chávez reported that Venezuela currently has 195 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of proven gas reserves. He also said that Venezuela will be the world’s fifth largest natural gas producer in a few years, and will become an oil and natural gas world power.

“This gas belongs to the Venezuelan people and it is for the wellbeing of the Venezuelan people.”

The Venezuelan president informed that in the first offshore drilling made in the gas fields located in the waters surrounding the Paraguaná Peninsula and the Gulf of Venezuela, a total of 9 trillion cubic feet of proven reserves have been found, out of an expected potential volume amounting to 32 TCF. Meanwhile, there are 10 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves in the Orinoco Delta.

President Chávez also highlighted that Venezuela has about 200 TCF of gas, which is approximately 33 billion barrels of oil.

The Venezuelan leader also said that by February 15, 2013, the Rafael Urdaneta Project will generate 300 million cubic feet of additional gas on a daily basis.

Besides, the Venezuelan president said that it is necessary to replace gasoline with gas in motor vehicles, since fuel consumption currently reaches 300,000 barrels per day.

President Chávez also said that the Venezuelan State could receive as much as $18 billion per year for the export of diesel and gasoline that “we are burning today in our country.”