(WO) – North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP) has installed 1,149 km (714 mi) of new flexible pipe on the eastern shore of Lake Maracaibo since starting operations there in 2024. The new pipe replaces aging steel lines that have been a major source of the leaks that have polluted the lake for decades.
The flexible pipe has protective layers that resist the corrosion that affects old steel, and it is laid in continuous sections from barges, leaving fewer joints where leaks usually start. Instead of patching old lines section by section, NABEP is replacing each well’s lines completely. So far, the program has run new flowlines and gas lines to 435 wells in the Bachaquero and Ceuta fields. Of those, 301 are producing through the new pipe, carrying about 52,000 bpd, and the rest will switch to the new lines when they come back online. This year, NABEP also repaired critical sections of 12-in. oil and gas trunklines, installing nearly 4 km of new steel pipe.
Decades of intensive production, poor maintenance and underinvestment left most of the lake’s estimated 25,000 km (15,500 mi) of underwater pipeline corroded. In 2021, a Simón Bolívar University scientist told NASA’s Earth Observatory that most of the pipelines were about 50 years old.
“Cleanups alone can’t keep up while old pipes keep leaking, so we’re reinvesting in a lasting fix: replacing the corroded lines we inherited, one by one,” said NABEP CEO Alejandro Betancourt. “We’re committed to being good stewards of this lake and good neighbors to the communities that depend on it.”
NABEP has another 176 km of pipe in storage and 791 km in transit. It plans to lay about 3,400 km (2,100 mi) more, including new lines connecting 144 wells to the Bachaquero 3 compressor plant. The work is part of NABEP’s broader buildout in Venezuela, where the company recently said its rig fleet will reach 41 in November and its production has topped 223,000 boed.
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