© Reuters / Isaac UrrutiaVenezuelan oil facilities
American sanctions generate "disturbances in the flow of oil supply to the world market as well as serious economic damage and suffering to the Venezuelan people," Quevedo said on Sunday in Saudi Arabia, ahead of a ministerial panel meeting of top OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers.
The Venezuelan economy has been under extreme pressure as the White House continues efforts to place opposition leader Juan Guaido in power instead of democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro. Keeping "all options" open to instigate regime change, the US has been systematically choking the country's economy by targeting the banking and other strategic industry sectors, concentrating their efforts on cutting oil revenues, which account for about 98 percent of the Bolivarian Republic's exports.
Comment: And far from expressing any shame, the US pathocracy has bragged about bringing the country to economic ruin:
On April 24, six days before self-proclaimed Venezuelan "interim president" Juan Guaido's attempt to violently overthrow Venezuela's democratically elected government alongside a handful of military defectors, the U.S. State Department published a fact sheet that boasted of Washington's central role in the ongoing coup attempt. After realizing the incriminating nature of its error, the State Department quickly acted to remove the page. [...]
Entitled "U.S. Actions on Venezuela," the document boasted that U.S. policy had effectively prevented the Venezuelan government from participating in the international market and has led to the freezing of its overseas assets. It read like a sadistic celebration of Washington's retribution against the Venezuelan population as a whole, the kind of collective punishment which is illegal according to Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions.
The State Department gloated in the deleted fact sheet that its policy had ensured that the Maduro government "cannot rely on the U.S. financial system" to conduct business, noting "key outcomes" of U.S. actions include the fact that "roughly $3.2 billion of Venezuela's overseas are frozen." It went on to boast that "Venezuela's oil production fell to 736,000 barrels per day in March... substantially reducing" government revenue.
Quevedo, the head of state-owned oil giant PDVSA, was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department last week along with four other officials for their ties to President Maduro. "We are intent on going after those facilitating Maduro's corruption and predation, including by sanctioning the President of PDVSA and others diverting assets that rightfully belong to the people of Venezuela," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
Amid ongoing social, economic, and political instability, Caracas continues to diversify its customer base, turning in particular to India, as well as other nations that recognize Maduro as the legitimate leader of the country. In a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Alexander Novak, on Sunday, Quevedo also stressed the "importance of maintaining a respectful relationship with the Russian Federation... to maintain the stability of the oil market."
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