I missed it, but PDVSA met a deadline

No, seriously, this is interesting. I missed it, but look. Back in 2010, I wrote:

The venture expects to pump 240,000 barrels a day after spending $8.3 billion to develop the Junin 5 block, Ramirez said. First oil will be pumped in 2013, Eni said today on its Web site. It will reach full production in 2016, Scaroni said.

And then earlier this year, some smart guy named Anatoly wrote:

Eni SpA (ENI), Italy’s largest oil company, said its joint venture with Petroleos de Venezuela SA has started producing oil from the Junin-5 block, advancing Venzeula’s plans to develop the world’s largest reserves.

Production from the block in the Orinoco Belt will reach 15,000 barrels a day by the end of the year and 75,000 barrels in 2015, the Rome-based company said in a statement today. The company had previously estimated it would reach 75,000 barrels of output from Junin-5 this year.

I have a lot of fun around here with PDVSA, but if the Eni venture is on target, that makes the current meetings between PDVSA and Eni actually vaguely interesting.

Time to end the Italian feud in the comments section (UPDATED)

My notes about Arevenca have attracted a lot of really strange, often very informative comments, mostly from anonymous or pseudonymous correspondents. But they have also inspired a weird fight between people upset with one another in Italy. They have been using the comments section of this site to make all manner of allegations and counter-allegations. They started out straightforwardly enough, but at this point, I don’t have the connections, skills or interest to disentangle their concerns. I am summarizing the issues here as a way to isolate this fight to one thread and get myself out of this festival of mud-slinging.