News coming out of Venezuela over the past two years has reeked of corruption and failed political leadership: a long list of shortages , rampant poverty , incrimination of the opposition , and a recent move that puts the regime of Nicolas Maduro one step closer to a dictatorship . And these are only the developments that are recorded, with a recent LA Times Op-Ed suggesting that a Venezuelan homicide epidemic rages “unreported” due to the country’s scrapping of crime statistics reporting over a decade ago. Despite all of this, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) expects Venezuela, endowed with the world’s largest oil reserves (depending on who you ask), to play a major role in the cartel’s plan to curb global supply. In OPEC’s November agreement, Venezuela accounted for almost 10 percent of the net supply cut from member nations (calculated as cuts minus allotted increases). (Click […]