China will invest $5 billion in various projects across Venezuela in the
coming years, including three power plants, state-owned oil company
Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, said Friday.
The deal forms part of a long-term accord between the two
countries in which Venezuela sends China oil in return for Chinese
investments in Venezuelan infrastructure, technology, agriculture and
other areas of the economy, PDVSA said in a statement.
Projects include three 300-megawatt thermoelectric power
plants needed to back up the nation's power grid, which has failed to
meet demand recently due to over reliance on hydroelectric power
stations that suffered during a drought. PDVSA gave no timeline for the
new plants to be built.
The company said the $5 billion would fund 19 projects in
total, without specifying all of them.
President Hugo Chavez has sought to increase oil shipments to
China and other countries to lessen the country's dependence on the U.S.
for oil revenue. Venezuela has accounted for up to 11.5% of annual U.S.
crude imports since 2007, down from levels of the late 1990s, before
Chavez took office.
In 1997, Venezuela accounted for a 17% share of U.S. oil
imports with a volume of near 1.4 million barrels a day, according to
the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the statistical and
analytical arm of the Department of Energy.
The most recent figures from China show that in the first six
months of 2010, China's crude oil imports from Venezuela were up 168.3%
from the same period a year ago, while China's imports of Venezuelan
fuel oil were up 14.5% from the same period a year earlier, making
Caracas the third-biggest supplier.