Venezuela has been the most strident of the Opec malcontents. Even this week oil minister Eulogio del Pino used a trip to the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Tehran to call for “something to be done” about low oil prices.
Venezuela is broke. It is overwhelmingly reliant on oil revenue. Of course prices have more than halved over the last 15 months. But years of underinvestment in state oil firm PdVSA and the use of it as a state piggy bank to be raided at will, meant that the country’s economy and oil sector were already in poor shape before prices tanked. The IMF predicts a 10% economic contraction this year. (CONTINUED - 265 WORDS)
