According to data made available online by the Instituto Nicaragüense de Energía, Nicaragua consumed 8.99 Mbbl of petroleum refinery products and produced about 5.7 Mbbl in 2005. The only refinery products that Nicaragua produced in excess of those consumed in the country were small quantities of kerosene-type fuel and asphalt. During the year, Venezuela was the source of approximately 55% of the nominal value of Nicaragua’s imports of crude petroleum and refinery products, followed by Ecuador (20%), Mexico (9.7%), and the United States (5.3%). All the other countries that supplied significant quantities of mineral fuels to Nicaragua were located in Latin America. Nicaragua imported about 5.6 Mbbl of crude petroleum during the year (Instituto Nicaragüense de Energía, 2006§; Banco Central de Nicaragua, undated a§, b§).

In 2005, the country did not produce crude petroleum or natural gas, and exploration plans for private companies interested in the country’s offshore mineral fuel resources remained on hold. The two large Atlantic autonomous regions in Nicaragua (north and south) contain a large estimated proportion of the country’s mineral resources, including both onshore and offshore deposits of crude petroleum. The national Government declared that legislation that was approved in 2003 to give the Atlantic regional governments more control over their regional economies does not apply to offshore oil rights, but the Northern Atlantic Autonomous Regional government still persisted in attempting to block or benefit from offshore petroleum exploration concessions that the national Government had awarded to private companies. As of December 2005, none of the offshore concessions in either the Pacific or the Atlantic basins for which the Government had granted exploration licenses had yet been signed, and no actual exploration activities had yet been conducted by the private holders of those licenses. In March 2004, the Government granted Industrias oklahoma Nicaragua S.A. (oKLANICSA) an onshore exploration concession that extended from about 40 km west of Managua to the Pacific coast and down the coast through the Rivas Department in the southwestern part of the country to the border with Costa Rica. In September 2004, the Government also awarded a 4,000-square-kilometer (km2) offshore exploration concession in the Caribbean Sea to MKJ Exploraciones S.A. of Metairie, Louisiana, as well as a 4,000-km2 concession and a 3,000-km2 concession in the Caribbean Sea to Infinity Energy Resources Inc. of Chanute, Kansas. In April 2004, Norwood Resources Ltd. of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, acquired a 70% ownership interest in the concession through entering into a joint-venture contract with OKLANICSA, which stipulated that Norwood conduct and finance all exploration and development operations on the property (throughout 2005) until commencement of productive operations (McGettigan, 2004; Norwood Resources Ltd., 2006, p. 9; U.S. Commercial Service, 2006, p. 34, 40; U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2006).