The U3 Explore Venezuela Project (U3Ven) was initiated in 2020 to create a digital repository of knowledge of Venezuela's oil & gas upstream industry. The Project's scope will eventually cover all Venezuelan oil and gas basins, starting with the most prolific top two: Eastern Venezuela (EVB) and Maracaibo.

Our vision of a Sustainable Development Data Center (SDDC) is to have a go-to digital library of validated knowledge for continuous enrichment and use for analytical products. This knowledge repository is essential for business decision-making for all natural resources development and energy transition projects. Validated subsurface and surface information is required for the short-, mid-, and long-term plans for the development of Venezuela.

U3 Ven has now been running for nearly three years. It started with collecting, validating, cataloging, and digitizing the information and data in the public domain with the application of the local knowledge of reputable Venezuelan experts. The wealth of information created over the last 30+ years remained dispersed in mostly analog publications. It is not readily available for research and projects and is vulnerable to destruction. We saw it as an urgent call to preserve the knowledge essential to the country's economic rejuvenation and growth. Fortunately, modern technology facilitates knowledge preservation, retrieval, and utilization.

The Project is facilitated by U3 EXPLORE members - a group of skilled and experienced technical experts with a collaborative mindset based on cross-functional work and integrative thinking. The multi-discipline team includes senior geoscientists, GIS specialists, professional and innovative digital solutions designers, and career E&P database creators.

Venezuelan industry veterans who have accumulated unique books, personal records, manuscripts, presentations, published research papers, personal outcrop description collections, photographs, and field experiences are organizing their material in storytelling publications and searchable digital library ready for information mining.

The first phase of the Project is due in Q1 2023. We are aggregating Play's information and leveraging the oil and gas field information available from different sources. The records must be normalized and sorted for future G&G analysis by O&G professionals working with the intrinsic complexities of the Venezuelan system of record for oil and gas fields.

The Project's second phase will incorporate basin descriptions and petroleum systems, with an estimated delivery time of Q2 2024. This phase will focus on an exploratory analysis of the remaining potential of the Venezuelan basins. The information on the reservoirs also could be used in the decarbonization projects, e.g., subsurface carbon storage and carbon-related EOR in mature areas of oil and gas production of the country.

Sponsorships are available for an acceleration of the 2023 Project's work plan.

This is a summary of the current work. You may contact the authors for Venezuelan consulting services, regional studies, or local investment opportunity assessments.