Massive blackouts in Venezuela in March and April have drastically reduced oil production at Chevron’s biggest oil joint venture in the country, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing data that it had compiled from company sources. Chevron holds a 30-percent stake in Petropiar, a joint venture with PDVSA in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt operated by the Venezuelan state oil firm. The project processes extra heavy crude oil from the Huyapari field and upgrades it to a lighter, higher-value synthetic oil. Due to the numerous blackouts and the rationing of electricity in the Orinoco Belt over the past two months, Petropiar’s production averaged 74,000 bpd in the first two weeks of April, which was 44 percent below the average production in the first two weeks of January. Petropiar has historically been one of the top producing projects in Venezuela and has a capacity of 190,000 bpd. The Chevron venture produced an average […]