TOKYO (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said investment deals signed with Japan and China are helping his country diversify oil sales away from the U.S., the South America nation’s biggest overseas market.

Venezuela secured $8 billion of investment in its Orinoco oil belt over five years from Japanese companies, Chavez told reporters in Tokyo on Tuesday. Total investment from Japan will reach $35.5 billion, he said without giving a time frame.
Chavez is on a tour to secure energy investments after declining oil prices forced him to cut government spending in March. He met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last week and will travel to China after concluding a two-day visit to Japan on Tuesday, where he met with Prime Minster Taro Aso.
“Japan needs oil,” Chavez said. “Venezuela wants to diversify its market.”
Chavez said he will sign a $4 billion investment deal in China tomorrow. Venezuela, the fourth largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S., depends on oil for 93 percent of its export revenue and half of the government’s budget.
Mitsubishi Corp., Japan’s largest trading company, and Inpex Corp., signed an agreement with Venezuela to study energy exploration and production in the South American nation’s Orinoco Delta area on Monday, the companies said in a joint statement.
Chavez said April 5 he would secure $1.5 billion in Japanese financing for refining and oil exploration. Prime Minister Taro Aso’s office said the two leaders signed a memorandum of understanding on Orinoco on Monday, without giving details.
Intensified competition for natural resources with China and India has prompted Japan to invest more in overseas oil and natural gas reserves, including in Venezuela. Japan gets more than 80 percent of its oil from the Middle East, which is closer and has better-quality crude.
-------------Oil imports
Asia’s largest economy imported 322,000 kiloliters (2 million barrels) of crude from Venezuela in 2007, marking its first purchase from the South American nation in 11 years, according to the trade ministry. The volume amounted to just 0.1 percent of Japan’s overall imports of about 239 million kiloliters.
Marubeni Corp. and Mitsui & Co., Japan’s second-largest trading company, signed a $3.5 billion deal in 2007 to import crude oil and petroleum products from Venezuela over 15 years. The Japan Bank for International Cooperation provided $1.89 billion in loans to support the companies.
In 1992, Inpex, Japan’s biggest energy explorer, acquired 100 percent of an onshore exploration area in Venezuela as part of a project to rehabilitate an existing field and explore for a new one. In 2006, the company was forced to sell a 70 percent share to PVDSA, as the state oil company is known, under Chavez’s policy of nationalizing the energy industry, according to the company’s Web site.