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News > Venezuela

Petrocaribe: 16 Years of Regional Integration and Cooperation

  • This June 29 marks 16 years since the creation of Petrocaribe, an integration mechanism promoting regional socioeconomic development.

    This June 29 marks 16 years since the creation of Petrocaribe, an integration mechanism promoting regional socioeconomic development. | Photo: Twitter/@telesurTV

Published 29 June 2021
Opinion

Since its creation, Petrocaribe has contributed to numerous social projects, significantly helping to reduce poverty.

Sixteen years after its creation on June 29 2005,  Petrocaribe continues to represent an integration mechanism that promotes regional socioeconomic development through the supply of oil and financing on favorable terms to other Latin American and Caribbean countries.

The initiative was promoted by the Venezuelan government within the framework of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - Peoples' Trade Agreement or ALBA-TCP, consolidating a new favorable, equitable and fair exchange scheme among Caribbean nations.

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Petrocaribe's success was highlighted by then President Hugo Chávez in 2010, when he said: "Many countries would have had to turn off the lights and perhaps declared bankruptcy some time ago, if it had not been for Petrocaribe."

It is currently comprised of Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Venezuela.

By the end of 2018 Petrocaribe had supplied 356 million barrels of crude oil and products, equivalent to US$31.523 billion, of which approximately 50 percent has been financed on a long-term basis.

At least eight joint ventures between PDV Caribe, S.A. and the state-owned companies of 12 Petrocaribe member countries have been conceived to make the energy cooperation policy viable.

The purpose of the joint ventures is to strengthen the technical and technological capacities of the member countries and to advance in the development of projects that allow for the efficient use and management of the available energy resources.

Through the relationship between joint ventures and the subsidiaries PDVSA Cuba and Comsurca (Comercializadora de Suministros Regionales del Caribe), a refining capacity of 134 thousand barrels per day has been achieved, distributed among Jamaica, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

In terms of electricity generation, it reaches a total of 589.35 megawatts in thermoelectric Plants, wind farms and mini-hydroelectric plants installed in Nicaragua, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Saint Kitts and Nevis. 

In 2019 Petrocaribe reported that the countries of the agreement have carried out 790 projects in the areas of food, electricity, education, environmental sanitation, public services, housing and health, among others, which have contributed significantly to poverty reduction.

The importance of Petrocaribe as an axis of regional integration was evidenced, when the then U.S. President, Donald Trump, launched in 2017 a plan to "counterbalance" the organization, through a so-called "Caribbean Energy Security Initiative," to minimize its impact in the area.

Despite U.S. pressure, Petrocaribe continues with its strategic priority, based on the principles of solidarity, cooperation and sovereignty, overcoming aggressions and the economic blockade unilaterally imposed by the U.S. government.

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