MOSCOW: Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro will meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin today as he ends his tour aimed at trying to persuade big oil producers to cut output to stop the price rout.
Prices of oil, cornerstone of both the Russian and Venezuelan economies, have touched their lowest in almost six years and Maduro traveled this week to Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Algeria to gather support for his diplomatic push. “The situation on the global oil markets along with some other issues will be among the topics to be discussed,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Itar Tass news agency.
Venezuelan and Algerian officials have this year initiated talks over production levels between Russia and producers group OPEC, but officials in Moscow have said the country, in which around 40 percent of output is in private hands, would find it technically tough to cut.
