CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela and U.S. company Chevron on Monday shut a jointly operated oil upgrader in the Orinoco region for 40 days of planned maintenance, a top official at state-run oil company PDVSA said.

Chevron has a 30 percent stake in the 180,000 barrel-per-day Petropiar joint venture. Since President Hugo Chavez put major oil projects under state control in 2007, PDVSA’s stake is 70 percent.
To offset the production loss while its upgrader is out, Petropiar will mix the extra-heavy crude it produces with a lighter oil. Output is expected to continue at 100,000 bpd to 110,000 bpd during the outage.
The stoppage at Petropiar has been planned for months but was postponed during elections of new leaders of Venezuela’s oil unions.
“Today we are starting” the stoppage, PDVSA vice president Eulogio Del Pino told Reuters by telephone.
Sources at Chevron confirmed the outage and said Petropiar had been ready to begin the maintenance since September.
Maintenance on Venezuela’s oil infrastructure frequently overruns deadlines.