Assignment Venezuela 1956 Creole Petroleum Corporation

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'Tells the story of an American oil company executive who relocates with his family to Venezuela.' Produced by Sound Masters, Inc.

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_Petroleum_Corporation

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The Creole Petroleum Corporation was an American oil company. It was formed in 1920 to produce fields on Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. The company was acquired by Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1928. Until 1951 Creole Petroleum was the world's number one oil producer.

In 1950, Creole opened its refinery at Amuay bay. This is now a part of the Paraguaná Refinery Complex considered the world's third largest refinery complex, just after Jamnagar Refinery (India) and Ulsan Refinery (South Korea).

The Venezuelan assets of Creole Petroleum Corporation were nationalized along with those of other foreign oil firms on January 1, 1976, becoming as Lagoven filial part of PDVSA, a Venezuelan government-owned operating company...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Venezuelan_oil_industry

Venezuela is one of the world's largest exporters of oil and has the world's largest proven oil reserves at an estimated 296.5 billion barrels (20% of global reserves) as of 2012.

In 2008, crude oil production in Venezuela was the tenth-highest in the world at 2,394,020 barrels per day (380,619 m3/d) and the country was also the eighth-largest net oil exporter in the world. Venezuela is a founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)...

Despite the knowledge of the existence of oil reserves in Venezuela for centuries, the first oil wells of significance were not drilled until the early 1910s. In 1908, Juan Vicente Gómez replaced his ailing predecessor, Cipriano Castro, as the president of Venezuela. Over the next few years, Gómez granted several concessions to explore, produce, and refine oil. Most of these oil concessions were granted to his closest friends, and they in turn passed them on to foreign oil companies that could actually develop them. One such concession was granted to Rafael Max Valladares who hired Caribbean Petroleum Company (later acquired by Royal Dutch Shell) to carry out his oil exploration project. On 15 April 1914, upon the completion of the Zumaque-I (now called MG-I) oil well, the first Venezuelan oilfield of importance, Mene Grande, was discovered by Caribbean Petroleum in the Maracaibo Basin. This major discovery encouraged a massive wave of foreign oil companies to Venezuela in an attempt to get a piece of the action.

From 1914 to 1917, several more oil fields were discovered across the country including the emblematic Bolivar Coastal Field; however World War I slowed significant development of the industry. Due to the difficulty in purchasing and transporting the necessary tools and machinery, some oil companies were forced to forego drilling until after the war. By the end of 1917, the first refining operations began at the San Lorenzo refinery to process the Mene Grande field production, and the first significant exports of Venezuelan oil by Caribbean Petroleum left from the San Lorenzo terminal. By the end of 1918, petroleum appeared for the first time on the Venezuelan export statistics at 21,194 metric tons.

It was the blowout of the Barroso No. 2 well in Cabimas in 1922 that marked the beginning of Venezuela's modern history as a major producer. This discovery captured the attention of the nation and the world. Soon dozens of foreign companies acquired vast tracts of territory in the hope of striking it rich, and by 1928 Venezuela became the world's leading oil exporter...