(Business News Americas) - "Venezuela's state oil firm PDVSA will launch international bidding to build an 800,000b/d-capacity extra-heavy crude upgrading plant in the Orinoco oil belt, a company official told BNamericas.

Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin is finishing conceptual engineering work for the plant, PDVSA refining VP Alejandro Granado said. 'The next step is to select the company that will actually build it [the upgrader], which will be done according to the tenders law. I believe we will announce the beginning of the process in June,' he said.

PDVSA says Orinoco has more than 1Bb of extra-heavy crude of gravity ranging from 7-10 degrees API. As such, it is mandatory to upgrade it into syncrude before it can be shipped to a refinery.

Venezuela produces 600,000b/d of syncrude from Orinoco but aims to ramp production up to 1.6Mb/d by 2015".