Ramirez didn't say how many of the 7,000 workers at the headquarters will lose their jobs, but most are currently on strike. The government says it will fire strikers - some 35,000 are off the job - and already has dismissed high-ranking executives. Ramirez, who told reporters last week of the plan to split the company, said a new board "with a more strategic vision" will soon be appointed. The company will focus more on production of crude, gas and refining, he said. Chavez long has said he wanted to restructure the company, which he has called a "state within a state" run by privileged executives.
Chavez wants to increase government revenues from the company. "We need a PDVSA much more efficient ... and not as an oil enclave, but a company at the service of the nation," Ramirez said. Bureaucracy in Caracas increases operating costs by $1 billion a year, he added. ***
A hike in production would represent an abrupt reversal in OPEC policy. OPEC's 11 members decided less than a month ago to slash output by up to 1.7 million barrels a day in the hope of preventing a price decline when seasonal demand dips this spring. But oil industry analysts and traders pointed out that any additional oil exported by OPEC would not reach the United States soon. As a result, they said they expected the price of oil in the United States to remain above $30 a barrel. Those high prices, in turn, have pushed up retail prices of gasoline, heating oil and jet fuel.
Ministers of each member country except Algeria have agreed to meet Sunday at the group's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, the official said. Since OPEC's Dec. 12 decision to cut production, worrisome signs of a potential shortage have begun to appear. Oil shipments from Venezuela, normally OPEC's third-largest producer, have dwindled by 80 percent because of a month-old strike aimed at forcing the country's president, Hugo Chavez, from office. A U.S.-led attack on Iraq would halt exports from that country, which has the world's second-biggest crude reserves after Saudi Arabia.
OPEC officials have said the group cannot pump enough additional crude to make up for a simultaneous loss of exports from Venezuela and Iraq, which together have historically exported roughly 4 million barrels a day. OPEC's remaining members have spare production capacity of 3.3 million barrels a day, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, the West's energy watchdog. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's most influential member, has proposed that the group raise output by 1.5 million barrels a day.
Crude prices slipped after news of OPEC's discussions. In New York, the price of light, sweet crude for February delivery tumbled $1.02 to $31.08 a barrel. February contracts of North Sea Brent crude fell 87 cents a barrel to $29.33 in London. February heating oil futures shed 3.91 cents to close at 84.88 cents a gallon, while February gasoline lost 4.02 cents to settle at 84.18 cents a gallon. Natural gas for February delivery gained 19.2 cents to settle at $5.127 per thousand cubic feet. [End]