Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil Pinto said on Sunday that his government and Russia will direct efforts toward restoring joint oil production in Venezuela to its full output. He told Ria Novosti that production was at around 120,000 to 150,000 barrels per day but that "the sanctions regime has greatly affected production."
"We agreed on the resumption of negotiations and the participation of Russian companies in joint ventures within the framework of the agreement that [the Venezuelan state oil company] PDVSA has. In the first phase, we are striving to restore the level of production that we had a couple of years ago. The second goal is to at least double this production level," Gil Pinto said.