Venezuela failed to boost oil production over the past 10 days as the government had pledged because strikers seeking to force out President Hugo Chavez disrupted the loading of tankers, the head of the state oil company said.
Oil output in Venezuela, which had been the fourth-biggest supplier of crude to the US, is unchanged since Dec. 28 at 600,000 barrels a day, or a fifth what the country was producing before a national strike began early last month, Petroleos de Venezuela SA President Ali Rodriguez said. The oil company has been unsuccessful in its effort to replace striking workers, hiring just 15 new employees since the walkout started, he said.
International shippers refuse to dock tankers because of safety concerns, said Rodriguez, appointed by Chavez in April.
"If you don't get the inventories out, the storage tanks get full and you have to stop producing," he said in an interview.
The longer oil production is interrupted in Venezuela -- where the industry accounts for half of government revenue -- the more pressure will mount on Chavez, who angered workers in part because of efforts to increase state control over businesses such as the oil company, analysts said. Venezuela's reduced output and the threat of a war in Iraq helped drive up oil prices to two-year highs.
Crude oil for February delivery rose as much as 25 cents, or 0.8 percent, to US$33.33 a barrel in after-hours, electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It traded at US$33.14 at 1:09am Caracas time.
Chavez, a former lieutenant colonel who survived a coup attempt last year, has refused strikers' demands that he resign or call elections by the end of March. Chavez, whose term expires in 2006, has vowed to break the strike and said last week that the government would restore full oil production and exports by the middle of February.
Striking oil workers "didn't consider or don't care about the terrible consequences of stopping the oil industry," Chavez said in a televised speech last night. "They're traitors of the homeland, criminals and terrorists."
His government has made repeated forecasts of how fast production would increase, including a promise to produce 800,000 barrels a day by last week. Oil exports that had totaled 2.4 million barrels a day before the strike have climbed back to 1.5 million barrels a day, Chavez said, contradicting Rodriguez's assessment that exports would only reach half their pre-strike levels by the end of January.
Industry analysts have said the government would need several months at least to restore full operations in the oil industry once the strike ends.
"Forecasts by Chavez and other government officials are a ploy to demoralize the strikers, showing them that their actions have failed," said Vitali Meschoulam, an analyst with political risk research company Eurasia Group in New York. "Everyone knows that's not case."
Rodriguez, who has said production would total 2 million barrels a day by the end of January, declined to make further forecasts on output. He said exports that dropped 81 percent last month to about 15 million barrels.
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