Page 7 - NorthAmOil Week 10 2022

NorthAmOil COMMENTARY NorthAmOil

geopolitical applecart; it’s also caused turmoil on possibility of restoring Venezuela’s access to
world energy markets. world oil markets in order to compensate for the
With respect to oil, Brent and WTI crude missing Russian barrels.
prices both topped $125 per barrel earlier this Maduro then said in a televised speech on
week, putting them more than 50% above March 7 that his government had “agreed to
their starting points as of January 1, 2022. As a work on an agenda going forward, issues of
result, gasoline prices are soaring throughout interest” with the US. “It seemed to me very
the Western world, and consumers are com- important to be able, face to face, [to] discuss
plaining. They’re likely to go higher in the near issues of maximum interest to Venezuela and
term, given that the US and the EU have now the world,” he remarked.
decided to restrict their imports of Russian So far, these developments have not had
crude, thereby limiting the volume of feedstock any concrete results. The US government has
available for refining. not yet lifted any specific restrictions on trade
Moreover, prices could climb even higher in with Venezuela, and PdVSA has not yet taken
light of Russia’s signal that it is willing to cut off any specific actions to expand production or
oil supplies in order to retaliate against its crit- improve its crumbling infrastructure as a con- Various news
ics. In a move that is sure to heighten concerns sequence of recent events. However, the outlook
about possible shortages, Moscow announced is definitely changing. sources have
earlier this week that it intended to freeze com- There may still be political battles ahead, reported that
modity exports up until the end of this year. though. Rubio and other US legislators have
These measures and counter-measures will, expressed concern about the prospect of doing the two sides
of course, also affect natural gas and LNG mar- business with Venezuela, with some pointing
kets, but that does not have much impact on out that Maduro’s regime is still engaging in discussed the
US policy toward Caracas. However, the immi- political repression and others urging the Biden
nent reduction in Russian crude supplies does administration to focus instead on giving sup- possibility
appear to have changed Washington’s attitude port to US oil producers. of restoring
considerably. Nevertheless, this is not the same conversa-
tion that might have been happening just a few Venezuela’s
New US strategy? short weeks ago.™
Hence the reports that a delegation of high- access to world
level US officials – including Juan Gonzalez, the NewsBase’s sister publication bne IntelliNews is
White House’s special advisor on Latin America following the war in Ukraine and its fall out with oil markets.
– travelled to Caracas during the first weekend in daily reports with correspondents across the entire
March for talks with the Venezuelan leadership. Emerging Europe region, including in both Russia
The Biden administration has not commented and Ukraine. Or sign up to Editor’s Picks here,
publicly on these talks, but various news sources a free weekly email digest of the most important
have reported that the two sides discussed the stories in the last week.

Week 10 10•March•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P7