Venezuela will next week circulate a new proposal to crude producers in a bid to support oil prices, President Nicolas Maduro said on Sunday, without providing details.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed on Nov. 30 to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day to 32.5 million bpd for the first six months of 2017, in addition to 558,000 bpd of cuts agreed to by independent producers such as Russia, Oman and Mexico.
“Venezuela, as of next week, will circulate a letter with a new proposal, a new formula for the stability of real and just prices so that it can be studied and debated by all the governments that have signed this deal,” Maduro said in a speech.
Maduro repeated that leaders of OPEC and non-OPEC countries should hold a summit in the first quarter of the year in Qatar to decide on strategy for the oil market.
“A meeting is necessary … with heads of states and governments of countries that signed this agreement, 25 countries. We need to see each other’s faces,” he said.
Venezuela has long pushed for high prices of oil, which accounts for over 90 percent of its export income amid a brutal recession.
(Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer and Diego Ore; Editing by Will Dunham and Peter Cooney)
