A search of KRY on Bloomberg doesn't show this article and a search of Steven Bodzin only shows the below article for Dec 12....somethings strange here if that Rusoro article shows up in the middle of the night it would surely be on Bloomberg this a.m.
Venezuela Oil Price Falls to 4-Year Low, 48% Below Budget Plan
By Steven Bodzin and Daniel Cancel
Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The price of Venezuela’s basket of oil and refined products fell 9.1 percent to $31.36 a barrel, a four-year low, a day after the country’s legislature passed a budget based on $60 oil.
The country, which provides 11 percent of U.S. oil imports, needs higher output and higher prices to balance its books next year. Venezuela pushed last month for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut output to arrest the price declines.
The current oil price is 48 percent below the $60-a-barrel assumption. The budget also assumes that output will grow rather than shrink as would be required by an OPEC cut.
“This budget is overblown, based on indicators that aren’t accurate and based on production that doesn’t take into consideration the coming OPEC cuts,” Pastora Medina, a lawmaker in the country’s National Assembly, said yesterday during the budget discussion.
Venezuelan oil sells at a discount to the benchmark West Texas Intermediate, which fell $1.47, or 3.1 percent, to $46.51 as of 1:05 p.m. in New York. It has fallen 68 percent since touching a record $147.27 a barrel July 11.
To contact the reporter on this story: Steven Bodzin in Caracas at sbodzin@bloomberg.net.
