Venezuela is crafting an emergency plan to guarantee diesel supply to farmers but with reduced price subsidies. Oil minister Tareck El Aissami and agriculture minister Wilmar Castro have been tasked with ensuring up to 30,000 b/d of low-sulfur diesel to farmers and livestock producers within two months, at still-undefined international prices. The plan would set supply quotas for sub-sectors such as vegetable and grains production and establish dedicated service stations in farm states. The Fedenaga livestock federation and Fedeagro farming federation welcomed the plan as a step in the right direction but warned that Venezuela could exhaust its remaining low-sulfur diesel stocks within two weeks. “The government should have developed and executed this plan in January but it focused instead on repairing PdV’s refineries and enforcing a fuel rationing plan that made no distinction between the needs of strategic sectors like food and livestock production and urban transport,” a […]