Shipment of 1 million barrels arrived as NABEP production passes 223,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Two tankers carrying 1 million barrels of Venezuelan crude produced by North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) have arrived in Corpus Christi, Texas.

To recognize the historic nature of the agreement between NABEP and its new anchor buyer, the United States government, NABEP delivered the first million barrels of oil at no cost to the U.S. taxpayer. The cargo marks the beginning of the company’s larger deal with the U.S. Departments of State and War, which grants the U.S. Government the right to purchase 20% of NABEP’s production at cost, with no markup, in addition to a 35% equity stake in NABEP’s parent company.

President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the Port of Corpus Christi to see one of the newly-arrived tankers on Tuesday.

“This cargo reached Texas in just over a week. Crude from the Middle East can take more than a month,” said Alejandro Betancourt, CEO of NABEP. “This first shipment since the U.S.-NABEP deal will be followed by thousands of such arrivals, and each one shows the world that Venezuela is back as a dependable energy supplier, with the United States as its anchor buyer. Every tanker that sails north sends jobs and investment back home to Venezuela.”

NABEP directly employs more than 5,000 people and supports over 10,000 contractor jobs across Venezuela. It also holds the rights to commercialize more than 65 billion barrels of proven reserves in the country and is targeting production of more than 1 million barrels of oil per day in the near term.

Over the past two years, the company has grown production from about 18,000 barrels per day to more than 200,000, funded by roughly $1 billion of its own investment. The same strategy is being used to fund its ongoing production push, with hundreds of millions of dollars more being reinvested every month. As of Oct. 19, NABEP’s total hydrocarbon production across its fields reached 223,509 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Source: PR Newswire