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# The Global Intelligence Files

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

## Re: [alpha] INSIGHT - VZ02 - More background/explanation on PDVSA's gradual decline

Released on 2012-08-10 21:00 GMT

Email-ID | 93089
Date | 2011-07-20 17:44:37
From | zeihan@stratfor.com
To | alpha@stratfor.com
List-Name | alpha@stratfor.com

actually, in a centrally planned economy they'd be fairly unlikely to do
this because it raises the cost w/o actually enhancing the project in
anyway
what they're trying to do is get OTHERS to pay for it -- and as the source
says, it aint working very well
On 7/20/11 10:24 AM, Karen Hooper wrote:
It's pretty standard fare for a centrally-planned economy. Also standard
is that it doesn't work without substantial subsidies. Question in
Venezuela always is how long can they afford to keep ramping up the
subsidies?
On 7/20/11 11:21 AM, Peter Zeihan wrote:
he's told us this before -- short version is that chavez has some of
the ideologes in charge of where things go, so they want to put
certain capital-intensive pieces of the infra in poorer areas despite
the fact that it makes no sense for the energy complex (nor is there
any local labor pool who could work the facilities)
its one of the things the source is particularly disgusted by
On 7/20/11 9:45 AM, Karen Hooper wrote:
Will ask.
On 7/20/11 10:40 AM, Reva Bhalla wrote:
why do they want to have the upgraders away from the coast? what's
the benefit?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Benjamin Preisler" <ben.preisler@stratfor.com>
To: alpha@stratfor.com
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2011 9:37:13 AM
Subject: [alpha] INSIGHT - VZ02 - More background/explanation on
PDVSA's gradual decline
PUBLICATION: If desired
SOURCE: VZ 02
ATTRIBUTION: Stratfor source
SOURCE DESCRIPTION: (Cuban) American oil specialist with extensive
VZ and Russia experience
SOURCE Reliability : B
ITEM CREDIBILITY: 2
DISTRO: Alpha
SOURCE HANDLER: Karen/Peter
Today, the crude is shipped to the coast by blending with naphta
or light crude. The upgraders are located near the coast. PDVSA
has a cockamamie plan, which makes little sense, to put the
upgraders away from the coast, and send the upgraded (or
synthetic) crude blend to the coast. This is a lousy option driven
by their desire to have industrial developments in the middle of
nowhere. I doubt they can pull it off, the guys making the
decision don't understand how much money they are throwing away,
plus it may not be feasible because the pressure vessels used in
an upgrader are huge, and they usually require marine transport -
but the sites picked by PDVSA are not reachable by reasonably
sized transport vessels.
I'm not aware of any real work being done to build the new
upgraders. Nor is there anything being done to develop the natural
gas production needed as upgrader fuel as well as to make the
hydrogen the upgrader needs to stabilize the syncrude. The
hydrogen issue is important because the plant is also fairly
complex, and usually one plant is built to feed two or more
upgraders.
So the key focus to see if they are doing anything for real is the
natural gas development. Without this, they have to use light oil
to blend with the extra heavy from the Oil Belt. There are schemes
to bring in light crude since they are running out of light, for
example Galeota Blend from Trinidad. Also they can buy naphta in
the international market and bring it in to blend. But this
requires tanks and pumps and so on.
It may be that a couple of foreign outfits are preparing to
produce say 50,000 BOPD each, which they'll blend. But I keep
being told by my contacts that production is falling in the
current developments of heavy crude, so the new production coming
in from the likes of Chevron and the Chinese may be needed just to
fill in the holes.
I think it'll be up to you guys to predict a supply shock if there
is to be one - I'm only saying the current decline will continue,
and they need to run a lot harder just to keep it from declining.
This means that, if the "new projects" announced by Ramirez, such
as the Chinese, Chevron and ENI ventures do move ahead, they'll
just keep production from dropping very fast - at best it'll be
level. But I keep hearing from friends there's very little real
activity.
I have friends inside PDVSA who tell me they spend a lot of time
on holiday. One of them, who is a very smart young man, tells me
he may lose his job because he's not adhering to the red party
line. I am no longer living in Venezuela, so I'm not inside to
hear people speak openly - they have to write to me or I hear
second hand accounts - but the key is that nobody reports real
activity to engineer anything serious - for example new pipelines,
new upgraders. And this means the "new" production is at best
intended to plug the gap caused by ongoing decline in existing
areas. I hear the old Total area, Sincor, is now suffering from a
serious shortfall in production due to water influx. So they got a
serious problem there. I think I wrote to you guys about this a
while back.
In conclusion, what I see is continued erosion of existing
production capacity, new projects, if they come in, may plug the
holes for a bit - but I don't see production rebounding, most
likely it'll continue falling. As long as prices are high, they
may be able to barely get by. But the moment the Lybian mess gets
fixed, prices ought to drop, and then they'll have a serious
problem. Watch what they do about gasoline prices - if they start
making noise about prices being too low (I mean the internal
gasoline price), then they'll be really hurting.
--
Benjamin Preisler
+216 22 73 23 19
currently in Greece: +30 697 1627467