After five years of plunging oil production and experiencing the near-collapse of its economically crucial petroleum industry and the worst peacetime economic crisis of the modern age, there are signs a recovery is underway in Venezuela. For some time, President Nicolás Maduro has claimed Venezuela’s once-mighty petroleum industry is recovering, yet plummeting crude oil output, deteriorating infrastructure, and numerous oil spills indicate otherwise. The latest numbers from OPEC, of which Venezuela was a founding member, indicate that the economically crucial industry could be in the process of recovering. The cartel’s December 2020 Monthly Oil Market Report indicates that the country’s oil output is slowly but steadily growing since the third quarter of 2020 when it averaged 362,000 barrels daily. For the month of November, Venezuela pumped on average 407,000 barrels of crude oil per day which is a healthy 6.5% increase over a month prior. Source: OPEC and U.S. […]