Following opposition's victory in Venezuelan elections, Rosneft starts evacuating employees' families

Following parliamentary elections in Venezuela, where the opposition won 59 percent of the seats, Russia's biggest petroleum company, Rosneft, has instructed staff working in the country to evacuate their families for safety reasons, according to the news agency RBC. 

"No one is planning to sell off the company's shares in Venezuelan projects, but it has in any case been recommended that the staff's families be evacuated," a source at Rosneft told RBC. Another source claimed that Rosneft might take additional measures to ensure the security of its employees.

The new parliament is expected to seek the annulment of an agreement between Rosneft and Venezuela's state oil firm PDVSA, having said the contract was signed "under coercion," according to Vladimir Semago, a former Duma member and the deputy head of the Russian-Venezuelan Business Council.

Update: Russia's ambassador to Venezuela has denied reports that Rosneft is evacuating employees' families for security reasons. According to Ambassador Vladimir Zaemsky, some families are leaving the country in connection with winter holiday plans, but there is no evacuation underway, he says.

Rosneft participates in five different oil-extraction projects in Venezuela today. The total combined reserves of these sites is estimated to be more than 20.5 billion tons of oil. In recent years, Rosneft has only expanded its presence in these projects, buying shares from Surgutneftegaz and Lukoil in the National Oil Consortium that owns a joint venture now developing the Junin-6 oil block in Venezuela. 

In November 2014, Rosneft and PDVSA signed two contracts supplying Rosneft with 3.2 million tons of oil and 16.5 million tons of petroleum products for five years. The agreement's prepayment was set at $2 billion. In May 2015, after meeting with Rosneft head Igor Sechin, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced that Rosneft planned to invest $14 billion in Venezuela's oil and gas sector.