Venezuela offshore oil vessel stable: Eni

A floating oil storage and offloading vessel (FSO) that was listing off Venezuela's coast has been stabilized, according to Italy's Eni, a minority partner of Venezuelan state-owned PdV at the field where the Nabarima has been moored for 10 years.

"The conditions of the FSO are stable and a recent water leak has already been solved," Eni said today.

Eni holds a 26pc stake in the PetroSucre joint venture controlled by PdV. The Corocoro field had been producing around 11,000 b/d of medium-quality crude before it was suspended in August 2019.

Venezuelan contractors and workers on and off the Nabarima have described broken equipment and a lack of maintenance that they say contributed to flooding of the vessel's engine room in recent days. The fresh water came from internal equipment and has since receded.

PdV and oil ministry officials told Argus this week that the around 1.15mn bl of stored crude would be transferred to another vessel in order to stabilize the FSO, but no concrete plans have been disclosed.

The crude has been stored on the small double-hull very large crude carrier (VLCC) for more than a year, mainly as a result of PdV's difficulties in finding buyers in the face of US sanctions. But an FSO is not designed to hold oil for a prolonged period of time, but rather to be filled and emptied on a regular basis, taking in production and offloading the crude onto tankers.

Eni denied that it hired technicians to assess the vessel, as reported earlier to Argus by a PetroSucre official.

The workers say they remain concerned about conditions on the Nabarima.

The unit is moored in the Paria Gulf, close to Trinidad and Tobago where equipment suppliers have been approached to assist in addressing the issue.

By Patricia Garip