If anyone is to ever write a guidebook on political survival, the skills of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would certainly top the contemporary charts. This autumn went relatively well for the besieged leader as the political headlines drifted towards the US-China trade wars, OPEC+ production cuts and the US impeachment saga. In fact, the weakening of media attention against the background of a rigid sanction regime nudged the Venezuelan authorities to render their economy a bit more market-based and also to throw more efforts into fighting the nation’s main scourge, hyperinflation. Yet once again elections in Venezuela are around the corner and the fragile stability might be jeopardized again. Graph 1. Venezuelan Crude Exports in 2017-2019 (million barrels per day). Source: Thomson Reuters. Let’s start first with crude and exports thereof. Bouncing back from a string of blackouts , outages and fires, PDVSA managed to bring back its oil […]