The Sincor heavy oil project in Venezuela involves the transformation of extra heavy crude oil into crude of high quality.
StatoilHydro has to-day an equity production of roughly 30,000 barrels of oil per day from the Sincor fields in the Orinoco Belt and from LL 652 in Lake Maracaibo.
The upgrading plant is located at Jose in eastern Venezuela.
On a daily basis, it converts extra-heavy oil volumes into about 180,000 barrels of high-quality syncrude, known as Zuata Sweet, 6,000 tonnes of coke (petrol-coke) and 900 tonnes of sulphur.
This syncrude is of a higher quality than Brent Blend reference crude.
Our competence and technology in the extra heavy oil value chain, both upstream as well as upgrading, is essential for success.
Extra heavy oil has higher density than 10 API and a viscoisty larger than 1000 cp.
The Orinoco Belt area is the greatest accumulation of such resources in the world.
