While analysts were busy calculating how much Iranian oil will come off the market with the U.S. sanctions and whether Saudi Arabia and Russia are offsetting losses, crude oil production in Venezuela “is in free fall” and could soon sink to below 1 million bpd, Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), told Reuters on Tuesday. “Venezuela production is in a free-fall and we expect that soon it may go to even below 1 million barrels per day,” Reuters quoted Birol as saying on the sidelines of an oil conference in South Africa. IEA’s head also expressed hope that oil prices won’t rise again this year from the current level of around $73 a barrel Brent Crude . “I hope that prices do not rise again because this will not really be good news for the global economy which is very fragile,” Birol told Reuters, reiterating […]