Lies, Damn Lies, and Oil Production Statistics: Venezuela Files SEC Report

[callady]

Lies, Damn Lies, and Oil Production Statistics: Venezuela Files SEC Report

Tuesday, Oct 18, 2005
By: Oil Wars

Last week the Venezuelan state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, submitted its audited financial statements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission for 2003. The full 150 page document is here and can be read by anyone who wants to review PDVSA’s performance.

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First it has been asserted quite frequently by the opposition that this financial statement would never be filed. The Chavistas running PDVSA were too incompetent to do it. Or there were so many irregularities in PDVSA that no outside auditing firm would sign off on it. And PDVSA was paying off all its debt issued in the U.S. so it wouldn’t have to file its SEC statement. These and many other assertions were made by the Venezuelan opposition. Well, now we can see, if there was really ever any doubt in the first place, what complete non-sense all of that was. PDVSA has met its commitments and shown is finances to be in order – and all signed off on by an affiliate of the big U.S. auditing firm KPMG.

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Now, 2.451 million barrels may look close to the 2.6 million barrels per day output number that the opposition has been throwing around. But remember, 2.451 milllion is NOT the total amount of Venezuela’s output – it is only PDVSA’s portion of it. There is oil produced by other companies in Venezuela, namely the extra heavy crude of the Orinoco Belt which is processed and turned into synthetic crude oil. In the main the oil produced in the Orinoco Belt is done by foreign companies who produce and sell the oil on their own. Accordingly, most of that production, 455,000 barrels per day , is not counted in the PDVSA production numbers. So how much of the Orinoco Production needs to be added to PDVSA’s production to get the total national production? Simple. Its 455,000 minus the 122,000 already counted in PDVSA’s numbers as indicated in the above quoted sentence from page 21 of the SEC filing. That gives 333,000 in non-PDVSA Orinoco Production that needs to be counted to come up with Venzuela’s total production. So here is the total average daily Venezuelan production for 2003:

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So there we have it. A close analysis of an AUDITED financial statement sent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission confirms that the Venezuelan government has consistently been telling the truth about this and it is the Venezuelan opposition that has been consistently lying. Wouldn’t it be nice to see some acknowledgement from the opposition blowhards on the internet who have consistently peddling the opposition’s bogus numbers? Francisco Toro, Gustavo Coronel, Miguel Octavio – apologies will be accepted. But given their track record of indifference to the truth I won’t hold my breath waiting?

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1580

[bemildred]

1. They will go right on lying about it.

The notion that Chavez is doing a good job of running
things without the help of the self-appointed elites
will not be allowed to penetrate their carefully insulated
minds.