100,000 bpd oil smuggled out of country: Venezuela’s energy minister

Venezuela’s western border is a smuggler’s paradise, The most lucrative trade of all is in petrol, Venezuela’s energy minister, Rafael Ramírez, reckons the equivalent of 100,000 barrels a day of oil is smuggled out of the country. The cause is a battery of state subsidies and price controls in place in Venezuela, which also maintains a heavily overvalued currency. Petrol in Venezuela is so cheap that an entire 50-litre (11-gallon) car-tank can be filled for well under $1, or less than six cents at the black-market rate. Over the border, gasoline costs about $1.20 a litre. The government says it loses to smuggling 40% of the subsidised food that it supplies to state-owned grocery stores. The economic impact runs to several billion dollars a year. More…