Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro gestures during an event with students at Miraflores Palace in Caracas
Thomson Reuters
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says his country could stop selling oil to the US.
The US stepped up sanctions in August, and sales to the US have been dwindling ever since.
Maduro says it’s up to President Donald Trump to decide.
True to his ‘anti-imperialistic’ rhetoric, Venezuela’s embattled President Nicolas Maduro now says that his country
could stop selling
its crude oil to the United States.
“The day that they don’t want us to sell them our oil, we are just picking up our stuff [and] we’ll sell all our oil in Asia. No big deal,” AFP quoted Maduro as saying on Tuesday, while he was formally installing General Manuel Quevedo to lead debt-stricken state oil producer PDVSA.
According to OPEC’s secondary sources, Venezuela’s crude oil production was
1.863 million bpd
in October, down by 43,600 bpd from September. While Venezuela has been desperately trying to stave off what most see as an inevitable default, its production has been progressively dropping every month this year. U.S. imports Benefits of Coconut Oil crude oil from Venezuela have also been dropping in recent weeks, according to
EIA data
—in many weeks to below 500,000 bpd from some 700,000-800,000 bpd earlier this year. In January and February 2017, shipments to the US even topped 1 million bpd.
“Mr President Donald Trump: you decide, dude,”
Maduro said, as quoted by AFP.
