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Words in the News

Venezuela in bid to extract more oil
2nd January 2012

Venezuela's Orinoco river delta is set to become a major hub for the oil industry in 2012
as several new projects begin to produce oil for the first time. The area has some of the
biggest oil deposits in the world. From Caracas, Sarah Grainger reports:

Venezuela overtook Saudi Arabia in 2011 as the country with the biggest proven oil
reserves in the world, according to OPEC. That was thanks to the deposits found in the
Orinoco Belt, an area that stretches over 55,000 square kilometres across the delta of
the Orinoco River as it meets the Atlantic Ocean.

But much of this oil is extra heavy crude - thick and sticky, it needs special equipment
to extract and refine it. Producing heavier crude has met with opposition over its impact
on the environment and companies exploring the Orinoco belt have had to look at ways
to minimise damage to the surrounding ecosystem.

It all means investment costs are much higher. Companies from Russia, China,
Vietnam, the US, Spain and Italy are looking at investing US$ 80 billion over the next six
years in partnership with the Venezuelan state oil firm. It's an unprecedented level of
investment for Venezuela.

Although the six projects are all due to be pumping oil in 2012, the consortia will not
make binding final investment decisions to commit to the projects until 2013.

Sarah Grainger, BBC News, Caracas

Words in the News © British Broadcasting Corporation 2011

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Vocabulary and definitions

overtook surpassed

proven oil reserves confirmed information of the existence of crude oil

deposits

stretches over spreads or covers a large area

sticky substance that tends to fix to any surface it touches

refine purify the raw material

ecosystem the animals and plants in a particular geographical area

and how they interact with each other

investment costs money spent in the process of bringing oil to the

surface

unprecedented that never happened before

the consortia several groups of companies joined together

to commit to to do something that can't be changed

More related to this story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14908556

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profiles/1229345.stm

Read and listen to the story and the vocabulary online:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2011/12/120102_witn_venezuela.shtml

Words in the News © British Broadcasting Corporation 2011

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