OREANDA-NEWS. Vice President Economic Area, Minister of Popular Power for Oil and Mining and President of Petroleos de Venezuela , SA (PDVSA ), Rafael Ramirez, agreed with a company in India the advanced construction of the first stripper in the Orinoco Oil Belt Hugo Chavez (FPO ) , estimated at USD 400 million investment to increase production.

Ramirez reported that there are plenty of extra-heavy crude that needs to be stripped to get lighter crude. PDVSA has as a project to free up existing breeders so it is approving the construction of additional strippers to increase production via mixture.

The Minister stated that "there is a market situation where light crudes are cheaper due to the production of shale oil , meanwhile we are working with Venezuelan light crude . We are testing seamlessly with Santa Barbara and Mesa 30, but we are also doing tests in Paraguana Refining Center (CRP ) diluted crude processing using facilities as an enhancer - stripper . "

The president of PDVSA also reported that thanks to the tests made it is stripping long around 60 thousand barrels of oil and he estimated that it could reach 150 billion barrels, which would resolve the existing bottleneck situation.

The strippers are responsible for returning the gasoline used in the transportation of extra heavy crude from the oil field to the builder, to be reused later.