Weekly Report - 19 April 2005

VENEZUELA | End to operating oil contracts. The 32 operating contracts signed with private firms, local and foreign, to extract oil will be scrapped within six months, after which the current contractors will have to enter joint ventures with the state oil company PDVSA, in which the latter will have a 51% stake. Energy minister Rafael Ramí­rez says this is because the contracts are lossmakers: last year alone, he said, the losses amounted to US$260m.