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Venezuelan oil prices drop below 40 USD

Xinhua, January 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

Venezuelan crude oil prices continued to drop, ending the week at a five-year low of 39.19 U.S. dollars per barrel, compared with 42.44 dollars a week ago, the Ministry of Oil and Mining said Friday.

The drop in oil prices is causing severe economic losses for Venezuela, which relies heavily on oil sales. Every dollar decrease in oil price represents some 700 million U.S. dollars lost in revenue. Since June 2014, Venezuelan oil prices have dropped by more than 60 percent.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is touring five members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to push for output reduction so as to stabilize prices.

OPEC members Venezuela, Russia and Iran are in favor of production limits, but the Gulf states are against the measure.

Plummeting oil prices are exacerbating an already tough economic situation in Venezuela, which is suffering from shortages of basic goods, inflation, soaring crime and a weakened currency. The black-market exchange rate is almost 25 times higher than the official one. Endi