CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA loses around $1.5 billion a year through domestic subsidies that make the South American OPEC member’s gasoline the cheapest in the world, the energy minister said on Sunday.
At a cost of $0.03-0.04 per liter ($0.11-0.15 per gallon), most Venezuelans can fill their tank for under a dollar. And since deadly protests in Caracas in 1989, successive governments have been wary of changing the subsidy policy and hiking prices.
“Compared to the cost of production, (the subsidy) is more than $1.5 billion (per year),” Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, who is also president of PDVSA, told President Hugo Chavez when consulted about the issue on a government TV program.
Rather than raise prices, the government is trying to reduce internal fuel consumption.
“We have to start to reduce gasoline use. Venezuelan gasoline is the cheapest in the world,” Chavez said. “The government subsidizes 90 percent of that fuel’s real cost.”
