By Mayela Armas

CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuela’s oil output may rise by up to 400,000 barrels per daily (bpd), if America authorizes state-run PDVSA’s partner requests for Venezuelan crude trades. This was the statement by the petroleum chamber of Venezuela on Friday.

Reinaldo Quintero, president of Venezuela’s Petroleum Chamber said that the increase would enable the OPEC member to reach 1.2 million bpd in oil production. According to official statistics, the January average was 755,000 bpd.

U.S. officials met Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela last weekend to demand that the country supplies at least some oil exports to the United States in any agreements to lift oil trading restrictions imposed against the country since 2019.

Quintero stated in a press conference, “With our capacity, we can increase 400,000 bpd.”

Companies such as GE could be the first to benefit from this move Chevron The Corp (NYSE 🙂 has pushed for new authorizations and licenses that allow traders to swap or trade Venezuelan oil.

It stopped the free fall of its oil production in 2021 and increased exports by 636,000 bpd, which was a 12 percent increase over previous years.

He said that even if sanctions against Venezuela were lifted for specific transactions only, Venezuela could eventually add 1,000,000 bpd to its production depending on the capital injections permitted and the trust of the parties involved in the dialogue.

Experts are less positive about the outlooks because of an urgent need to drill rigs and huge capital. The ceiling is being set on production growth, which is already exceeding capacity.

Venezuela’s oil production has suffered from years of underinvestment, poor management, and most recently U.S. sanctions on PDVSA. In the latter 90s, Venezuela produced 3.7m bpd.

PDVSA was able to revive output last year thanks to the help of small oil service companies that agreed to partial debt payments. A key swap agreement with Iran provided the necessary diluents for Venezuela’s exportable grades. However, it has not yet reached 1,000,000 bpd in monthly output.