| Many major oil producers and OPEC leaders may not have been enamored by Hugo Chavez's charm, but his presence served a useful purpose: under his leadership, Venezuela mismanaged its matchless oil reserves and crude production fell.
With him gone, major producers now face yet another competitor in an already crowded market. Venezuela sits on the world's largest proven oil reserves of 296.5 billion barrels, but under Chavez, production had declined from a peak of 3.5 million barrels in 2000 per day to around 2.4 million bpd at the end of 2012, and Venezuela had slid from one of OPEC's major producers, to its sixth largest, according to OPEC data...............................................Full Article: Source
|