El Tigre (Venezuela), Oct 31 (EFE) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed more than a dozen accords here, including a significant pact on a joint venture for a oil refinery.
The two leaders met Friday at a soy plantation in eastern Venezuela for their seventh quarterly review of bilateral relations.
Topping the agenda was the agreement on operations for the Abreu e Lima refinery, which is under construction in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco.
Lula and Chavez in May 2009 had expressed their concern over the delay in the negotiations and ordered Brazilian energy company Petrobras and Venezuela’s Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) to expedite the talks.
The project had been facing delays since its inception in 2005.
Lula said the $12 billion facility will start operations in 2011 as per schedule and will have the capacity to process 230,000 barrels of crude per day.
Petrobras began work on the plant last year, despite the lack of a final agreement with PDVSA, which is to defray part of the construction cost and supply the refinery with crude from Venezuela’s Orinoco oil belt.
Executives from PDVSA and Petrobras signed several other agreements at Friday’s meeting, including one that calls for the Brazilian firm to assist the Venezuelans in getting more oil out of mature fields in Lake Maracaibo.
Venezuela is world’s fifth largest oil producer and also a key supplier to the US, while Brazil has recently discovered vast new offshore reserves with the potential to make it an energy superpower.
The talks in El Tigre also resulted in accords on joint projects to manufacture television sets and cell phones.
The two leaders began the day with a tour of a new agricultural training facility set up with help of Brazilians.
They also paid homage to the Brazilian independence hero Jose Inacio Abreu e Lima, but the ceremony was interrupted by torrential rains.
