Venezuela, the country sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves, could be pumping as little as below 500,000 bpd of crude oil next year amid the economic and political crisis, IHS Markit said in an analysis on Tuesday. The sweeping sanctions that the United States imposed on Venezuela’s oil industry have failed to result in a regime change nearly six months after opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president and won the support of the U.S. and many other western nations. According to IHS Markit, Venezuela’s oil industry has deteriorated so much since 2014 that any recovery would be a long time coming. The protracted political crisis also means that the military and Maduro’s regime will intensify the stick-and-carrot approach to foreign investors, with whom Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA has joint ventures to produce heavy oil, Ford Tanner, a Principal Analyst at IHS Markit, says. “The official […]