Business | Oil & Gas

Venezuela tones down rhetoric on high prices

Venezuela is not interested in seeing oil prices rise further and is pushing to stabilise the market, president Hugo Chavez said on Friday following a visit to the site of a Brazilian refinery being built to process Venezuelan crude.

  • AP
  • Published: 00:16 March 29, 2008
  • Gulf News

Recife, Brazil: Venezuela is not interested in seeing oil prices rise further and is pushing to stabilise the market, president Hugo Chavez said on Friday following a visit to the site of a Brazilian refinery being built to process Venezuelan crude.

The comments were a departure for Venezuela, which has been hawkish on prices and consistently opposed production increases as a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec). It was not clear whether Chavez would support production increases to limit oil prices, which are topping $105 a barrel for light, sweet crude.

"We are not interested in seeing the oil prices continuing to rise," Chavez said in a joint news conference with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. "We want to contribute to the stabilisation of the prices."

Rangebound

Chavez said Venezuela has pushed in the past for a system to keep prices within a band, and that it worked for three years until the invasion of Iraq "pulverised it". Chavez also said he hopes the US economy recovers soon to keep the rest of the world from being affected. Venezuela is a major supplier of oil to the United States.

On Wednesday, Chavez announced that his government is prepared to provide billions of dollars to help build the refinery in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco slated to begin operating in 2010.

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