By Dmitry Zhdannikov<\/p>\n
DAVOS, Jan 21 (Reuters) – U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told oil company executives on Wednesday that Venezuela’s output can \u200brise 30% from its current level of 900,000 barrels per day \u200cin the short- to medium-term, three executives who attended the meeting said.<\/p>\n
Raising crude output from \u200cVenezuela, which sits on the world’s largest oil reserves, is a top objective for U.S. President Donald Trump after U.S. forces seized Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro in a raid earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Wright’s closed-door meeting with the executives took place \u2060on the sidelines of the \u200cWorld Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.<\/p>\n
Years of under-investment and sanctions have led Venezuela’s oil output to plummet. It pumped \u200d3.5 million bpd in the 1970s when it accounted for 7% of global supply, but today represents just 1% of the world’s production.<\/p>\n
Trump has said the U.S. plans \u200bto control Venezuela’s oil resources indefinitely as it seeks to rebuild \u200cits dilapidated oil industry in a $100 billion plan. So far, his administration has taken 50 million barrels of oil out of Venezuela, and is selling some of it in the open market, Trump said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Trump met with over 15 oil executives earlier this month at the White House, during \u2060which Exxon CEO Darren Woods told Trump \u200bthat Venezuela would need to change its laws \u200bbefore it could be an attractive investment opportunity.<\/p>\n
Oil analysts and executives have been skeptical about a quick revival of Venezuela’s \u200doil sector, pointing out \u2060that its degraded infrastructure would require billions of dollars and years to rebuild.<\/p>\n
Venezuela’s oil reserves are also among the world’s costliest to \u2060develop, because its crude is so thick and heavy it requires specialised equipment to extract, \u200ctransport and refine into usable fuels.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Writing by \u200cStephanie Kelly; Editing by Joe Bavier)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dmitry Zhdannikov DAVOS, Jan 21 (Reuters) – U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told oil company executives on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":533228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,90678,79,92550,5005,67,132,68,32322],"class_list":{"0":"post-533227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-chris-wright","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-nicolas-maduro","12":"tag-president-donald-trump","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-venezuela"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115935648436134074","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}