CARACAS: State-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) exceeded one million barrels of crude produced per day at the end of 2021, double what it recorded a year ago, the country’s Oil Minister Tareck El Aissami announced.

This figure was reached despite the dozens of sanctions the US government has imposed on the South American country, El Aissami said in a Christmas message in December. “Despite the threats of the criminal blockade of the US, here are a people standing with dignity and in the vanguard: the oil working class,” Xinhua news agency quoted the Minister as saying. At the end of 2020, the Venezuelan state oil company reported a production level of 500,000 barrels per day, but production rose to 876,100 barrels per day at the end of November of this year.

The Venezuelan government reported that from 2014 to 2019, the country experienced a 99 per cent drop in its foreign exchange earnings. President Nicolas Maduro said in September 2020 that “of every $100 or euros that the country obtained from the sale of oil in 2014, today it obtains less than one”.

The country has started a phase of economic recovery through the diversification of production and the rehabilitation of Venezuelan petroleum activity, according to the government.