23 Facts About PDVSA

1.

Since its founding on 1 January 1976 with the nationalization of the Venezuelan oil industry, PDVSA has dominated the oil industry of Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil exporter.

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2.

Oil reserves in Venezuela are the largest in the world and the state-owned PDVSA provides the government of Venezuela with substantial funding resources.

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3.

PDVSA has a production capacity, including the strategic associations and operating agreements, of 4 million barrels per day.

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4.

In 2002, many PDVSA employees went on strike against the policies of Chavez, who in response fired over 19,000 workers from the company.

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5.

PDVSA saw stagnant growth in the following era which was defined by a boom in oil prices.

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6.

Many ex-PDVSA employees moved to Alberta, where the oil consistency is similar to that of the Orinoco.

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7.

Many PDVSA workers migrated to Colombia, joined Ecopetrol, and were credited with helping the company attain huge profits throughout the 2010s.

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8.

The minister said: "PDVSA is red [the color identified with Chavez's political party], red from top to bottom".

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9.

In 2012, PDVSA focused in hiring only supporters of the president and PDVSA revenue was used to fund Venezuela's "socialist revolution".

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10.

PDVSA has since formed its own militia, which all employees join on a voluntary basis, to ward off a potential "coup" by the government.

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11.

In 2005 PDVSA opened its first office in China, and announced plans to nearly triple its fleet of oil tankers, to 58.

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12.

PDVSA has still not filed its 2004 financial results with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that were due in June 2005.

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13.

In 2008, PDVSA had been Latin America's largest company, but in 2009 it was overtaken by Petrobras and Pemex, according to a ranking of the region's top 500 companies from Latin Business Chronicle.

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14.

In February 2012, PDVSA paid $255 million to ExxonMobil in compensation for nationalization of ExxonMobil's Venezuelan assets in 2007 and $420 million to be paid beginning in 2012 to US firms Williams Cos Inc and Exterran Holdings, Inc for natural gas assets nationalized in 2009.

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15.

In 2010, PDVSA loaned the government of Antigua $68 million to repurchase all remaining shares of West Indies Oil Company from Bruce Rappaport's National Petroleum Ltd.

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16.

In 2012, PDVSA announced that it would enter into a joint venture agreement with Eni SpA and Repsol in order to initiate a gas production project at the Cardon VI gas block in Venezuela.

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17.

The repeated poor performances of PDVSA are heavily linked to Venezuela's current hyperinflation crisis.

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18.

Between 1999 and 2017 PDVSA earned an estimated $635 billion in revenue and produced an additional $406 billion worth of oil.

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19.

Since 2015, a US Justice Department investigation into PDVSA corruption resulted in 12 guilty pleas pertaining to a bribery scheme between PDVSA and its contractors; This scheme involved members within the company who would insure favorable treatment of vendors in exchange for kickbacks.

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20.

PDVSA was, despite dwindling performance, able to add Russia's Rosneft as an extraction partner in 2013, with the anticipation of extracting 2.

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21.

On October 30,2018 PDVSA paid $949 million on its Citgo backed bond to investors, a payment many analysts thought was impossible for the company given its recent liquidity struggles.

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22.

The next payment is due in April 2019; whether or not PDVSA will make a full payment is uncertain as Venezuela has been completely insolvent with the rest of their $60 billion debt.

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23.

PDVSA has offices in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, China, Cuba, Spain and Netherlands.

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