Quote from: STT on February 17, 2019, 10:12:36 PM

Really that could be the most important question, if Russia or China were to be able to refine the oil that Venezuela has then at least that end of the problem is solved for them. They just have to handle the production side, I have heard Russian personal will be deployed to Venezuela to ensure production continues and the country can meant its payment obligations
How the worlds largest reserve nation for oil comes to have such a problem when its entirely foreseeable has to be some appalling planning, even excluding every other reason this is enough reason for resignation and would be patriotic imo but these people never go easily or with any larger regard for others sadly

I do know India has developed a large capacity to refine crude oil and I guess they are a potential customer, they have little oil of their own to process. However they are already a main customer to Iran who are not lacking in capacity so it would come down to competitiveness. I also believe the world economy is not growing as fast as it could or should be, generally this is bearish for oil pricing but efficiency is always bullish

from today's news:

- Russian lender Gazprombank has decided to freeze the accounts of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA and halted transactions with the firm to reduce the risk of the bank falling under U.S. sanctions, a Gazprombank source told Reuters on Sunday.

another article about indian oil:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-india-ioc-usa/indian-oil-signs-first-annual-deal-for-u-s-oil-idUKKCN1Q70BU
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-gazprombank/russias-gazprombank-decided-to-freeze-pdvsa-accounts-source-idUSKCN1Q60BK

I think India will look twice before buying venezuelan oil. Also as you said Russians staff take care of part of oil production, they will, as Chinese take care of their investments by keeping Maduro in governance unless opposition give them strong warranties ( that still will not happen imo). Now even if economy is doing better and oil barrel price rise again, venezuela will be not abble to restart production fully within years due to poor maintenance and lake of qualified personals that went abroad. Also many naturals ressources like fishing area suffered due to polution from pipelines leaks or gold extraction that seems to be booming.