SLB has access to Venezuelan oilfield data via contract, say sources
Three sources said that a contract signed by SLB with Venezuela's PDVSA, the state-run oil company in Venezuela, last week gave the U.S. technology and oil services company access to oilfield data from the nation with the largest crude reserves. According to sources, the?deal?will enable SLB to upgrade and organize PDVSA’s vast but outdated database following years of neglect as well as a recent cyberattack. Venezuela hasn't published oil statistics for more than 10 years. The last annual bulletin from the oil ministry came out in 2015. The lack of data, other than the limited monthly output data that is reported to OPEC has been a major barrier to promoting oilfields as investment opportunities and tracking core activities such as output, refinement and exports. The contract between PDVSA & SLB includes data management and essential services, from reservoir characterization to real time crude?production. Sources say that the companies haven't disclosed the scope of the contract. However, they said SLB will be able use new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to modernize, expand and restore the reliability of Venezuela's oil data. The agreement aims to assist PDVSA and oil ministry to digitize and consolidate the data in the oil industry, according to one source. The person said that if a new company needs information about a particular oilfield, they can get it from the cloud.
PDVSA is wracked by chaos since a ransomware was used to shut down email and a contract management software late last year. Sources said that the company's employees are communicating using free services such as Telegram while its facilities operate independently from a central system.
PDVSA's main applications have been patched in recent months. However, it still needs to migrate its systems, including its geological databases and production databases, to new providers, and implement modern tracking devices, according to the experts.
One source said: "Functionality has been restored, but a lot of data was lost due to damage to the servers." Some data will need to be reconstructed from paper copies.
The contract was signed after years of delayed payments. Many other details, such as the duration and payment method, are still unknown.
SLB and SLB discussed payments in kind including crude as part of the negotiations. Money transfers will be difficult, as the U.S. controls all the revenue from Venezuela's oil exports. This leaves Venezuela little room for negotiation.
Venezuela's oil minister and the U.S. Embassy in Caracas confirmed last week that an agreement had been signed between SLB and PDVSA for "modernizing exploration and production." William Antonio, SLB's director for Mexico, Central America, and Venezuela, stated last week that the contract between PDVSA and SLB began immediately after its?signing. William Antonio, SLB's head for Mexico, Central America and Venezuela said last week at a conference in Houston that the contract with PDVSA began immediately after it was signed.
Washington imposed severe?sanctions in 2019 on Venezuela's Energy Sector. PDVSA has defaulted on payments of billions to oilfield service companies such as SLB.
Many oil executives said that companies now willing to work PDVSA take precautions to avoid any new payment issues.
A myriad of software patches and applications that PDVSA installed to work around sanctions that prevent U.S. technology companies from working with Venezuelan state companies is another major obstacle for any service contract. SLB will give Venezuela's PDVSA statistics a first look from the outside, despite all of these challenges. Venezuela has been very protective about its PDVSA statistics in recent years. (Reporting from Marianna Paraga in Houston, Ana Isabel Martinez, in Mexico City, DeisyBuitrago, in Caracas, and Mircely Guanipa, in Maracay. Editing by Nathan Crooks, and David Gregorio.
(source: Reuters)
