Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is bringing his controversial brand of petroleum diplomacy to Vietnam, a geopolitical move in line with South American fuel exporter's bid to ship less oil to the US and more to Asia. Vietnam's state-owned oil company, PetroVietnam, and its Venezuelan counterpart, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), announced big new plans in August for joint upstream and downstream oil projects. In one multi-million dollar deal, PDVSA plans to export crude oil and invest in the establishment of a Vietnam-based refinery to take and process the fuel. Venezuelan energy and oil minister Rafael Ramirez said the deal would entail the creation of two joint companies, one to transpor
Venezuelan crude oil to Vietnam and the other to jointly refine the fuel. Reciprocally, PetroVietnam said it aims to expand its existing upstream exploration activities, now in the development phase, in Venezuela's Orinoco basin in partnership with PDVSA. The upstream contracts are expected to be formally signed later this month when Chavez makes his second official visit to Vietnam. The negotiations were hammered out in Caracas in August when a delegation of Vietnamese officials led by Industry and Commerce Minister Vuy Huy Hoang met with Chavez and his Venezuelan government counterparts. The deals are expected to help shore up Vietnam's shaky energy security while diversifying a bigger share of Venezuela's oil exports away from the West and towards Asia. Chavez, who has cut a strong profile in Latin America with his left-leaning economic nationalism and diplomatic antagonism towards the US, has stated his ambition to build strong, trade-linked ties with Vietnam's communist regime. His visit later this month will follow up an initial energy cooperation agreement he signed in July 2006 in Hanoi. At that time, Chavez was reported saying that he hoped to draw Vietnam into his alliance against "US imperialism". This came just a few weeks before Chavez's eyebrow-raising remark at the United Nations when he said he could still smell sulfur on the podium after an earlier presentation made by US President George W Bush. Chavez has used generous oil deals and revenues earned through PDVSA to forward his anti-US political agenda in Latin America. His overtures towards Vietnam represent Chavez's first big foray into Asia. His campaign has aimed at building closer ties with similarly left-leaning governments, such as Cuba and Bolivia, and other countries that are not closely allied with the US or Western Europe.
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