(Upstream) - "Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA is reported to have signed a deal to buy natural gas from Spanish company Repsol YPF's Quiriquire Profundo field in the country.

A Repsol official told Latin American news service BNamericas that deliveries from the field would start 'almost immediately'.

Flows from the Repsol field will be pumped into the Interconexion Gasifera Centro pipeline, which links supply areas to Venezuela's CRP refining complex, the world's biggest.

PDVSA said separately in a website posting that the deal would run for 20 years, BNamericas said.

Repsol joins Vinncler, a unit of Canada's PetroFalcom, as the only foreign companies supplying the key pipeline.

PDVSA is short of natural gas supplies to boost steam-generation for heavy oil recovery and petrochemicals manufacturing due to years of underinvestment".