Venezuela seeks to double oil exports to China

Venezuela is looking to double its daily oil exports to China to 1 million barrels in 2015 from the current level of 500,000 barrels, Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez has said. Speaking at a conference in Beijing on bilateral cooperation, Ramirez said his country, which currently has a verified oil reserve of more than 200 billion barrels, is expected to be one of China's major petroleum suppliers.  
According to statistics from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, in April 2012, Venezuela was the fourth-largest source of China's oil imports after Saudi Arabia, Angola and Russia. The country exports a daily average of 460,000 barrels of crude oil to China, accounting for 8.3 percent of the nation's total oil imports.
China's oil imports from Venezuela have been growing from 49,000 barrels a day in 2005 to the current level of around half a million, he said.
According to Ramirez, a joint venture set up by PetroChina and PDVSA, Venezuela's national oil company, is currently producing 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day, and he expected the amount to increase to 1.1 million barrels a day, mainly due to the development of Venezuela's Orinoco heavy-oil belt.