Maduro proposes regionalizing oil prices for achieving market governance

The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, proposed this Wednesday at the Forum “Russia Energy Week 2017”, the regionalization of oil prices and the establishment of a basket of currencies for marketing, as mechanisms of governance of the market “to break with all the instruments of future speculation”.

“Venezuela is proposing the need to build a new form from the Monitoring Committee of the OPEC and Non-OPEC countries, with the incorporation of all producers … something that already existed first in the 60’s,, the regionalization of price of oil and secondly, marketing through a basket of currencies”, the latter mechanism set in motion by the country as a result of the sanctions imposed by the administration of Donald Trump.

Based on the Venezuelan proposal, Maduro stressed the importance of the OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee, a coordination mechanism designed to monitor compliance with production and marketing processes, opening the door to new instruments of research, exploitation, marketing and development of fossil energies. “This is just the first step in the middle of the contingency, the sharp and sustained fall in oil prices …”

The Venezuelan President urged the maintenance of the oil agreement signed at the end of 2016, in which OPEC countries pledged to extract 1.2 million barrels per day (MBD) and 558,000 barrels the 11 producers. A commitment that registered a compliance of 116% of the goal in August 2017, thanks to the high level of discipline.

“We have reached one of the highest coordination and discipline levels we have ever seen, a tremendous virtue, in addition to Governments such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Iran, in daily coordination to achieve a new governability of the oil market.”

Maduro was optimistic about the behavior of the oil market in the next eight months, watching for a recovery in prices, which in his view will have a positive impact on investment, which is one of the main problems of producing countries that has unleashed a cyclical crisis.