Venezuela's Maduro Proposes Summit of OPEC, Non-OPEC Oil Producers to Fix Prices

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has suggested that countries making up the OPEC group of oil producers and oil-rich non-OPEC nations should hold a summit to set out a pricing strategy for the next decade.

MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) — The proposed meeting should be held in the first quarter of 2017, Maduro said late Tuesday.

"I plan to propose in writing that we should hold a summit of heads of state and government from the OPEC and non-OPEC member states in the first quarter of 2017 to discuss how to stabilize the oil market and protect fair prices in the next 10 years," Maduro said, as quoted by the national news agency AVN.

Speaking in the northern state of Carabobo, Maduro said he had discussed ways of shoring up crude oil prices and OPEC’s recent agreement on output cuts in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Energy ministers of OPEC and non-OPEC oil producing countries will convene in Vienna on December 10, in a follow-up to the OPEC's deal to set an oil production ceiling at 32.5 million barrels a day to raise the prices. Some non-OPEC oil producers agreed to decrease their output by a total of 600,000 barrels a day, with Russia agreeing to take half of that from the market.