Venezuela: 1.5 Million Barrels per Day Goal, Oil Industry Rises

Venezuela aims at significantly expanding its oil industry this year despite numerous sanctions and the U.S. blockade. The goal is to produce 1,508,000 barrels per day, for which president Nicolás Maduro extended for another 12 months the Declaration of Energy Emergency in the Hydrocarbons Industry.

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"I want to say that in the wave of the Anti-Blockade Law and in the wave of new contracts that are beneficial for the Republic and international investors, we are proceeding to advance in the negotiation with companies from around the world from Turkey, India, China, from Russia, from Europe," President Nicolás Maduro said on Friday during the Management Balance of the Presidential Commission "Alí Rodríguez Araque," which leads the planning within the industry.

On the other hand, the Minister of the People's Power for Oil Tareck El Aissami said that "this year PDVSA is going to close its production at 1.5 million barrels of crude. It is a plan that we made together with the workers."

"We are convinced that the coordinated work between the Alí Rodríguez Araque Presidential Commission, the working class and the productive sectors will be able to promote and guide the integral development of this great reserve of 330 billion barrels of oil and 197 trillion cubic feet of gas," the official added.

The U.S. sanctions against the Venezuelan hydrocarbons industry have devastated the country's economy and the wellbeing of its people, as it has been verified by the  United Nations. Moreover, "the theft of PDVSA US subsidiary Citgo, prevented Venezuela from selling 500 thousand barrels of quality and cheaper oil to US refineries," Maduro explained. 

However, El Aissami points out that Venezuela's oil reservoir, the world's largest, is "an explicit interest of certain actors of world energy geopolitics, authors of the multi-system and multiform war that we are facing and we are defeating."

In this sense, president Nicolás Maduro also invited U.S. investors to work in the country. "I want to tell the investors of the U.S., the oil investors that the doors of Venezuela are open for the oil, gas, petrochemical investment of the American capital, to work in a win-win partnership."