Rosneft CEO Briefly Talked To Venezuelan Ambassador To Russia At Mass In Chavez's Memory

The CEO of Russian state-controlled energy giant Rosneft, Igor Sechin, had a brief conversation on Tuesday with Venezuelan Ambassador to Russia Carlos Rafael Faria Tortosa during a service in memory of late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, a Sputnik correspondent reported

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 05th March, 2019) The CEO of Russian state-controlled energy giant Rosneft, Igor Sechin, had a brief conversation on Tuesday with Venezuelan Ambassador to Russia Carlos Rafael Faria Tortosa during a service in memory of late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

The ceremony is held in Church of St. Louis of the French in the center of Moscow.

Sechin first shook hands with the ambassador and exchanged a few words with the diplomat before laying flowers next to a photo of Chavez.

Chavez served as the Venezuelan president from 1999 until his death caused by cancer on March 5, 2013.

Being one of the largest foreign investors in Venezuela, Rosneft is currently involved in five joint oil exploration projects with Venezuelan state-owned oil and gas company PDVSA, and has been also granted a production license for Venezuelan Patao and Mejillones offshore fields and the right to export the produced gas for more than three decades.

Last week, Venezuelan authorities announced that Caracas intended to relocate the office of PDVSA, which has been hit by US sanctions amid the recent political turmoil in Venezuela, from Lisbon to Moscow, partially in order to expand cooperation with Rosneft and another Russian energy giant, Gazprom.