Venezuela's Bitumenes Orinoco (Bitor) soon will sign a deal to sell 3.4 million tons/year of Orimulsion to Taiwan, matching its biggest sale to date.
Orimulsion is an emulsion of extra heavy crude oil, water, and a surfactant that is designed to back out coal as a low cost, environmentally preferred boiler fuel.
Bitor is a subsidiary of state owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA (Pdvsa).
Far East market p
ushBitor Pres. Jorge Zemella said his company received "with great satisfaction" a report from Taiwan on the outcome of a tender by Taiwan's state owned power company to select new projects assigned to independent power producers (IPPs).
Zemella said Bitor affiliate MC Bitor Ltd. will "significantly penetrate" the Asian market with the Orimulsion sale to Taiwan.
Orimulsion will be the sole fuel of a power plant to be built by a group led by Intergen at Lizhe in the Suao region on Taiwan's east coast. Sales will begin in 2000.
The project is one of many proposed under a Taiwanese government initiative to solicit IPPs from the private sector to build power plants to meet Taiwan's soaring electric power demand.
Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs recently chose from the first round of proposals seven groups to build a total of 7.11 million kw. Combined power capacity of 23 projects proposed under the first round totaled 30.3 million kw.
Oil products and natural gas will feed some of the other winning projects.
Lizhe project
Among the companies selected in the first round is a combine led by International Generating Co. (Intergen) , a joint venture of Bechtel Group and Pacific Gas & Electric affiliates. Other members of the group are Taiwan Synthetic Rubber Corp., APED, and China Steel.
The combine's Lizhe plant will have an installed generating capacity of 1.5 million kw involving two units of 750,000 kw each.
One of the units will begin operations about mid-2000 and the second by the end of that year.
MC Bitor and Mitsubishi Corp. will supply those units about 3.4 million tons/year of Orimulsion for 25 years exported from the Jose terminal in Anzoategui state, eastern Venezuela.
It will be the largest supply contract of Orimulsion in the Asia-Pacific region. MC Bitor and Intergen are expected to sign the agreement soon.
Zemella said, "The approval constitutes the most significant step forward in the Asia-Pacific region by Bitumenes Orinoco, through MC Bitor, in penetrating the electricity segment of the energy market in the Far East."
The market has been dominated by energy sources such as gas, coal, and conventional liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
The next step in marketing Orimulsion in the region is to prepare an environmental impact study to obtain permits from Taiwanese local and regional authorities.
Copyright 1996 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
