Gas in Venezuela: the country flares more than twice what Perla delivers

Every day about 580 million cubic feet of gas leave Perla, the field in the Gulf of Venezuela, for PDVSA Gas pipelines. That is a third of what the domestic market consumes. On September 30, at the Caracas oil summit, the manager who coordinates the field for Repsol put it this way: "It seems I am taking the most expensive, costliest gas to meet what is needed at home."

Three days later it was reported, citing unidentified people, that Eni and Repsol, equal owners of the field, are weighing the sale of part of their stakes to fund its development. Neither confirmed it. A sale would put a price on an asset. The manager's sentence raises a question that comes before any sale: if the gas holding up a third of the domestic market is the most expensive in the country, is there enough of the rest, and where does it come from?

PDVSA Gas answers that there is enough. Those who produce Perla, and the sector's own numbers, sketch something else.

There is enough

The president of PDVSA Gas said it on state television on August 13: "We have the domestic market guaranteed at 100% for methane." His plan is to reach December delivering about two billion cubic feet a day to the domestic market — power, industry, households and commerce — and he counts Perla in that sum: the field's 580 million go to the country, he said, and the field has capacity to reach 1,200.

Eni backs that reading with its own signature. In its September 2 release, the same one in which it announced it would operate Junín 5, it wrote that the sustainability agreement signed by Cardón IV, the license that operates Perla, provides for expanding production "increasing volumes supplied to the domestic market" and sets the conditions for future exports, which it calls additional. The government had presented that same agreement, in March, as a guarantee of industrial and household supply.

What was reported in April, citing people close to the talks and with no published text, points the same way and puts a number on it: the partners could export once they deliver 645 million cubic feet a day to domestic consumption, and to grow they would install two more platforms by 2028. Eni said that same day that talks were ongoing and no deal had been finalized; in September it wrote that the agreement now defines the conditions for exports.

In this reading, the country eats first.

Not enough where it is needed

The Repsol manager did not dispute the volume: he disputed the cost. Perla is "a high-investment, high-cost development," he said, when the country has "every possibility" of producing gas associated with oil. That is why his company's view is that the domestic market "should not depend on Cardón IV's growth."

And there is only one customer. All of Perla's gas goes to PDVSA, under a supply commitment through 2036 and a PDVSA guarantee over collection rights, according to Repsol's 2025 accounts. The guarantee did not prevent arrears. As of June 30, Eni carried overdue PDVSA invoices for its half of the gas with a nominal value of $2.301 billion, excluding interest, worth €909 million on its books. And the partners get paid in barrels: Repsol received the first crude cargo as payment for gas in May and expects four more before year-end, one of them to finance a 10% increase in production.

Ten percent on 580 is 638 million cubic feet a day. The drilling phase the manager described in Caracas takes the field to about 645, the same figure that, as reported in April, must be delivered to the country before exports. The growth on its way is growth for the domestic market, and it is being paid for with oil, one cargo at a time.

Volume, moreover, does not reach everywhere. According to an estimate by an engineer specializing in energy, the two pipelines carrying Perla's gas to Zulia add up to about 300 million cubic feet a day and are practically full, and that Termozulia's TZ7 unit would need between 35 and 45 million more to generate its 150 megawatts. In Zulia, the bottleneck is not the field but the pipe. The president of the Venezuelan Association of Gas Processors said at the same summit that new gas will "hardly" reach the country before the end of 2026.

And the growth that comes after those 645 million already has someone waiting for it abroad. The pipeline to Colombia needs a minimum investment of $66 million before exports, according to CAF, and a U.S. Treasury license it does not yet have.

The gas nobody buys

Missing from both readings is the gas that gets flared. According to the World Bank, which measures flaring by satellite, Venezuela flared about 13.5 billion cubic meters of gas in 2025, the fourth-highest figure in the world, after Russia, Iran and Iraq. Converted to the unit the Venezuelan industry uses, that is about 1.3 billion cubic feet a day: more than twice what Perla delivers.

That is the counterweight to the manager's sentence. The associated gas he points to as an alternative exists, and much of it is lost in the flare stacks. The World Bank counts Venezuela among the countries with the highest flaring intensity in the world and attributes it to outdated infrastructure and bottlenecks in processing, which the outage of the Muscar–Soto line worsened in 2025. The hydrocarbons minister promised in June to bring flared gas into the domestic market with the recovery of the compressor fleet, without putting a volume or a date on it.

Venezuela's cheap gas is not under the sea. It comes out with the oil, and to reach a home or a turbine it needs compressors and pipelines that today fall short.

The first private answer to that gap came on October 5. Baker Hughes announced it had signed an alliance with PDVSA, the builder Lindsayca and the developer Fulcrum LNG to restore and expand gas infrastructure, and the order it describes is the same one reported for Perla: first, the works PDVSA needs to cover its own demand and bring gas to power generation; over the medium and long term, open-access pipelines and the country's first liquefied natural gas exports. The money would come from Fulcrum, which describes its model as infrastructure paid for with private capital, without burdening governments or producers. It is a cooperation framework: each project will need its own contract and OFAC authorization, and the announcement names no fields, volumes or amounts.

What tips the balance

Both readings can be tested before year-end, and with the sector's own numbers. PDVSA Gas's has a target and a month: about two billion cubic feet a day delivered in December. The processors' has a date and it is the opposite: new gas for the country, not before 2027.

The second test travels on a tanker. If the cargo with which Repsol finances the 10% increase arrives, Perla will approach the 645 million that, as reported, open the door to exports; if it does not, the field that supplies a third of the country's gas will stay at 580, with a single customer and paid in crude.

There is a fourth, slower one. The alliance's first project contract with Baker Hughes will show where private capital starts: with compressors for the gas flared today, or with liquefaction.

The last is the sale, if it happens. Whoever buys into Perla will be paying for a field whose only customer owes one of its owners more than two billion dollars in nominal terms and pays in barrels. The price, if published, will show how much the market discounts for that way of getting paid.

Meanwhile, the country's cheapest gas keeps going out through the flare stacks.