CARACAS (Dow Jones)--Venezuela plans to support Brazil's possible membership in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Venezuela's oil minister said Thursday.
"We would support it," Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez told reporters after a joint event with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Brazil has been producing enough oil to meet internal demand, but after discovering a monster oil field off its coast that could have up to 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent, or BOE, the country is likely to become a net exporter.
Lula, who heads a government and business delegation to Caracas to sign cooperation agreements, said Thursday in a speech that Brazil was close to joining OPEC and that "maybe in a couple of years" his country could be part of the organization.
Separately, Ramirez said the government was ready to assign the Carabobo 1 oil field, an extra-heavy oil field in the petroleum-rich Orinoco Basin, where Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR), or Petrobras, performs a reserve quantification process.
In a September meeting between both presidents, Chavez said that state-oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, or PdVSA, would provide 60% of capital for the Carabobo project, and that Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PBR) would be the main partner.
"The plan is to have a preferred partner, which in this case is Petrobras, and we will select the other partners through an auction," said Ramirez.
He also said PdVSA has received a formal offer for the Borco crude-storage facility located in the Caribbean, but declined to say who the bidder was.
The facility, based in the Bahamas, has a total operational capacity of 20 million barrels but actively uses between 13 million and 15 million barrels of its capacity.
In a meeting with reporters weeks ago, Ramirez said that PdVSA had received unsolicited offers for a number of assets including an $800 million bid for Borco.
PdVSA Director Asdrubal Chavez declined to comment on the issue beyond saying: "Borco has not yet been sold."