The four blocks are all located in eastern Venezuela, and hold an estimated 11 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) is expected to invest $172 million in the project by 2010, which is now being called "Delta Caribe." The thing that catches my eye is that PDVSA will own a 35%-70% stake in each gas block, according to Venezuela Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez. This means that other companies/countries will be doing the major exploration, while Venezuela profits a great deal from it.

I've already talked about China and its fuel needs, so I think Sinochem will be a top bidder, because fuel and energy should be (and I think it is) China's top priority. The bottom line is that without energy, your economy will not grow for very long without having serious problems, and China needs energy. At this point, I think China does need to make some kind of partnership with Venezuela with oil because of these reasons. On the note of China and Venezuela, Chinese cars have started to expand quite well in Venezuela, and Venezuela president Huge Chavez actually wants to increase "friendship" with China. It will be something to keep an eye on certainly.

I'm not a big fan of Venezuela (I don't think many people are), mainly because of their government, and the way they make partnerships with oil. It is clear that there is a lot of potential fuel in Venezuela, but their greed is really taking over, in my opinion. As I mentioned above, PDVSA will have a large stake in the gas blocks, and it looks like they will be profiting from it a great amount without doing a lot of the exploration. I could be wrong, but I hope the companies that do end up bidding for the gas blocks don't overdo it and do all the exploration themselves while making only a small percentage of the profit involved.

The four licenses for the gas blocks will be awarded by this November, and commercial production of the natural gas is expected to begin by 2012.