(Kommersan) - "Venezuela intends to agree with Russia's LUKOIL on joint production of crude by this year-end, President Hugo Chávez announced, ITAR-TASS reported.

Chávez and LUKOIL spokesman in Venezuela Sergey Sipunov had a talk during the live broadcast of 'Hello President!' program of Hugo Chávez. Sipunov spoke about the final stage of assessing reserves of the Orinoco's Junin-3, which are preliminary estimated at 235 billion barrels of heavy/extra-heavy crude, and about their international certification.

Chávez took actions of the Russians with clear enthusiasm and specified that, closer to this year-end, state-run Petróleos de Venezuela intends to set up a venture with LUKOIL to jointly produce crude from these fields. Chávez said wider cooperation in crude oil was one of the subjects during his talk with President Vladimir Putin. Chávez met with Putin when he visited Russia in June".