Caracas (Platts)--25Feb2009

Venezuela will asks its fellow OPEC members to again cut crude production
at the organization's next meeting, scheduled for March 15 in Vienna, finance
minister Ali Rodriguez said Wednesday.

Rodriguez had been Venezuela's energy minister earlier in the
administration of President Hugo Chavez, which will be represented at OPEC by
current energy minister Rafael Ramirez.

"At the next March meeting Venezuela together with some other countries
and depending on what the monitoring committee informs to OPEC, will propose
new cuts if that is necessary," Rodriguez said in a television interview.

OPEC in December bundled a new net cut of 2.2 million b/d with two
previous cuts totaling 2 million b/d to set a production target of 24.85
million b/d for its 11 members bound by quotas. Iraq is not bound by OPEC
production targets.

Venezuela depends heavily on high oil prices to meet its spending goals.
Perhaps most alarmingly for the country, while the 2009 federal budget was
calculated at $60/barrel, the Venezuelan oil basket is currently hovering just
above $30/b.

Rodriguez stressed that Venezuela has several billion US dollars tucked
away in different funds, including some $30 billion in international reserves,
to spare it any undue hardship from the current global financial crisis.

While the United States is suffering myriad consequences from the crisis,
"in the case of Venezuela, the crisis will only affect us in terms of the
variation in oil prices," Rodriguez said.

--Carlos Camacho, newsdesk@platts.com