Venezuela – one of the OPEC deal’s staunchest promoters and supporters – produces around 500,000 barrels per day of heavy oil, and this figure has been left out of the agreement, Venezuelan oil minister Eulogio del Pino told Russia’s TASS news agency on Wednesday. As part of the OPEC deal reached last week, Venezuela is pledging to cut 95,000 bpd from its production level – as OPEC named it a ‘reference production level’ – of 2.067 million bpd. (Click to enlarge) Now Venezuela’s oil minister admitted there are some difficulties in estimating each OPEC member’s production and reference output level based on the so-called secondary sources. “We are in favor of taking these sources into account. For us, this question concerns oil production in the oil belt of the Orinoco River, which has heavy oil that needs to be upgraded through special capacities – around 500,000 […]