Crude oil prices had a rocky start to 2021. There are plenty of wildcards which will continue to fuel price volatility for the foreseeable future, the most notable being supply threats with global oil production expected to expand despite sharply diminished demand growth. One such event is whether Venezuela, after suffering one of the worst economic collapses witnessed outside of war, can rebuild its shattered energy sector and return to pre-2017 production levels to pump more than two million barrels per day. Venezuela’s autocratic president Nicolas Maduro believes this is achievable and has been steadily implementing a range of radical measures designed to trigger an oil industry recovery. The strife-torn founding OPEC member’s petroleum potential is tremendous. Aside from having the world’s largest crude oil reserves of over 303 billion barrels, in the space of little over three years Venezuela’s crude oil output collapsed, plunging from over 2.1 million […]