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Venezuelan president to meet OPEC chief over oil prices

Xinhua, November 16, 2016 Adjust font size:

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Tuesday he will meet with Secretary-General of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Mohammed Barkindo in Caracas to discuss an agreement to prop up oil prices.

"Tomorrow I have a meeting with Mohammed Barkindo to continue working on an agreement that should be signed between OPEC and non-OPEC (oil) producers at the end of this month that should stabilize the price of oil," Maduro said during his regularly scheduled radio program.

Venezuela has proposed a freeze on production levels to shore up crude prices, which have plunged in recent years.

"We are going to...fine tune the agreement...and should significantly and definitively stabilize oil prices," Maduro added.

Maduro hopes OPEC's 14 member countries will sign the agreement during a ministers' meeting scheduled to be held in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 30.

Maduro, who has also campaigned for a freeze among non-member countries, said "our mission is a new global oil alliance."

The proposal calls for capping output at between 32.5 million and 33 million barrels a day.

Earlier this month, Maduro indicated the goal was to stabilize prices from 70 U.S. dollars to 80 dollars per barrel.

"It's not fair...for us to do the investing and exploring, apply the technology, maintain the workers, the drilling and the pipelines, and extract the oil, and for four speculators in the world to say how much oil should cost," Maduro said. Endi