<article><p class="lead">Venezuela is lobbying for an agreement to reduce Opec and non-Opec crude production by up to 1.5mn b/d at a producers´ meeting in Vienna this week, but its voice is largely muted as domestic output slides down to 1mn b/d.</p><p>Venezuela´s influence in Opec, a group that it helped to establish in the 1960s, has become "negligible", a Venezuelan energy ministry official told <i>Argus</i>.</p><p>"Large producers dictate Opec agreements, and small producers are heard but have no real influence," another energy ministry official said. "The external façade of Opec unity has been a fiction for years."</p><p>Venezuela needs a robust output reduction agreement to bolster global oil prices up to $70/bl to recover oil revenue, the ministry officials separately agreed.</p><p>Venezuela was influential when it could produce 3mn b/d, "but those times are long gone," one of the officials said, referring to the 1990s production level.</p><p>State-owned oil company PdV is struggling to reverse a five-year decline in production from around 2.3mn b/d in 2013, according to secondary sources quoted by Opec, to 1mn b/d or less in December 2018.</p><p>Official production figures almost always exceed the levels estimated by secondary sources, including <i>Argus</i>. Venezuela´s latest official production figure reported to Opec is 1.43mn b/d in October. The November official figure has not been reported yet.</p><p>"At this stage direct and secondary data discrepancies are meaningless," one of the two ministry officials said. "Venezuela's production continues falling month after month and PdV clearly is incapable of halting the decline under current operating conditions."</p><p>"As Venezuela's crude output goes lower, its voice and influence within Opec will vanish like a mirage in the Saudi desert," the other official said.</p><p>The Venezuelan economy is in a steep downward spiral, and both PdV and the Venezuelan government are in <a href="https://direct.argusmedia.com/newsandanalysis/article/1803148">default on almost all of their debts</a>.</p></article>
