Maduro aims to raise oil pumping in Venezuela by more than 300% by 2025

Maduro aims to raise oil pumping in Venezuela by more than 300% by 2025



Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said today that he hopes to raise the pumping of state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) more than 300% before the end of 2025, when the second 6-year term that began on Thursday ends and whose legitimacy does not recognize the opposition and part of the international community.

"In 2025 we must reach the grand goal of 5,000,000 barrels per day of oil production, our country will be buoyant," said Maduro during his annual speech, which delivered before the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), a forum composed only of official and not recognized by many governments.

According to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which cites secondary sources, Venezuelan pumping stood at 1,137 million barrels per day during last November, as the Maduro goal represents an increase of 339.75% in the next 6 years.

"Personally I assume the leadership of the oil industry, to carry it forward as of today," added the Chavez governor in reference to alleged "mafias" within PDVSA that would have created "knots" to benefit economically and caused the marked fall in production who experiences PDVSA.

"All those knots I will untie to release the process of oil production expansion, those knots and others," he said.

Maduro said he will use the scheme of mixed capital companies to increase production, a model already implemented by his predecessor and political mentor, the late President Hugo Chávez (1999-2013).

"That is my concept, I have no other (...), all fields (of exploitation) are open to mixed capital, to shared recovery," he continued.

He explained that opening the industry to international capital will be necessary to "bring the technology" that PDVSA needs, and that the sovereignty of the country will be "guaranteed".

The Caribbean nation has as a rule to assume the majority shareholding of the mixed capital oil companies that form within its territory.

Venezuela is the country with the largest oil reserves on the planet, but it is going through a severe economic crisis and its current pumping is the lowest in the last 30 years, except for several months between the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, when a strike in PDVSA plummeted production to less than 100,000 barrels per day.

Although Maduro today blamed the fall of the pumping on the internal "mafias", the Venezuela chapter of the NGO Transparency International pointed out in its report last November to the politicization and terrible management as the main causes of the collapse.

According to the NGO, "more than a temporary fall of the oil production, during the last five years there has been a destruction of the productive capacity of the industry".

While for alleged acts of corruption the Prosecutor's Office has opened investigations against more than 100 former senior officials of the state, including its last two presidents, Eulogio del Pino and Rafael Ramírez, who was the head of PDVSA between 2004 and 2013.

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