Venezuela has four major sedimentary basins: Maracaibo, Falcon, Apure, and Oriental. The crude Oil held in these fields has an average API Gravity of less than 20 degrees, making Venezuelas conventional Crude Oil heavy by international standards. As a result, much of Venezuelas oil production must go to specialized domestic and international refineries.

PdVSA- Oil Exploration and Production

It is difficult to assess how much oil PdVSA actually produces. Independent industry analysts estimated that the company produced 1.3 million bbl/d of crude oil in 2004, while PdVSA executives place the companys 2004 production at 1.9 million bbl/d. With production by OSA projects and strategic associations estimated at a total of around 1.2 million bbl/d, PdVSA therefore is responsible for 50-60 percent of Venezuelas national oil production. The Maracaibo basin contains slightly less than half of PdVSAs oil production. The fields in this area are very mature, requiring heavy investment to maintain current capacity. Centers of production in the area include Tomoporo, Lagunillas, and Tiajuana. In late 2004, PdVSA completed an expansion project at the Tomoporo field that increased production to 116,000 bbl/d from 100,000 bbl/d. PdVSA stated that Tomoporo contains over one billion barrels of recoverable reserves, and the company hopes that future expansion will increase production at the field to 250,000 bbl/d by 2008. Adjacent to Tomoporo, PdVSA is also conducting exploratory operations in the Franquera field, which it believes contains 500 million barrels of reserves. PdVSA hopes to increase production from the Tiajuana field from its current 312,000 bbl/d to 527,000 bbl/d by 2012. In order to mitigate steep decline rates in the Maracaibo Basin, PdVSA re-injects Natural Gas into the reservoirs in order to increase pressure. In general, the fields in the Oriental basin are less mature than those in the west, and they were some of the first fields brought online after the 2002-2003 strike. PdVSA planned to launch addition exploration in 2005 at the El Tejero and Cotoperi fields, near the existing El Carito and El Furrial fields in Monagas state. In November 2004, the company announced that it had discovered sizable deposits of medium crude oil in the Travis field, also in Monagas state.