OREANDA-NEWS. Venezuela should rethink its costly campaign to boost production capacity so long as oil prices remain weak, former longtime oil minister Rafael Ramirez said today in a rare televised interview in Caracas.

"We can continue spending millions of dollars to raise production capacity, but if there is no short-term price recovery then it truly makes no sense," said Ramirez, who currently serves as Venezuela's UN ambassador in New York.

State-owned PdV issued a revised $260bn investment plan in June that reiterates an elusive target of 6mn b/d of production capacity in 2019, from the company's current officially reported level of over 2.6mn b/d. Argus estimates that production is around 2.1mn b/d.

The remarks by Ramirez, a former influential regime figure who served as energy minister and PdV chief executive in 2003-14 before he was removed amid allegations of corruption, appear to contrast with the strategy of his successor, Eulogio Del Pino.

Del Pino, a PdV veteran, has pressed hard to develop the technically challenging Orinoco extra-heavy oil belt, with limited progress. He recently sparked a backlash among regime hardliners with a proposal to return nationalized oil services companies to their previous owners, an idea he later watered down.

Ramirez blamed Opec for weak oil prices. Internal disagreements within Opec are "the fundamental" cause of collapsing oil prices since 2014, he said.

"The discord within Opec is conditioned by the great political conflict that exists between the Gulf countries, Iran and the Russian Federation, and of course this discord had a tremendous impact on the Venezuelan economy," he said.

"It's very important that Venezuela continue insisting to other Opec and non-Opec producers on actions to recover the oil price," Ramirez said.

Del Pino and foreign minister Delcy Rodriguez departed Venezuela yesterday to lobby oil producers to take coordinated action aimed at strengthening prices.

Maduro said the "dynamic duo" would take Venezuela's proposal for price-boosting measures to other oil producers which he did not specify, but which could include Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.

Ramirez vigorously denied corruption allegations leveled against him in July by the opposition-controlled National Assembly's committees on energy and government oversight, which are conducting separate investigations into suspected malfeasance at PdV and state-owned utility Corpoelec.

"I am absolutely not implicated in any way in the alleged embezzlement of funds at PdV between 2004 and 2014," he said, blaming the allegations on opposition mudslinging intended to demoralize PdV.

Opposition legislator Freddy Guevara, chairman of the assembly's audit committee, tells Argus that investigators have linked former and current senior PdV executives to over $7bn in missing funds. Guevara did not directly implicate Ramirez.

Ramirez dismissed suggestions that the Maduro government is becoming internationally isolated. "Venezuela isn't isolated internationally in the slightest," Ramirez said. "Venezuela has a great deal of support in the UN, including Russia, China, and many African and Latin American countries."

The IMF and World Bank forecast that Venezuela's GDP will contract by up to 10pc in 2016 with annual inflation of over 700pc.

A 50pc general wage increase that President Nicolas Maduro decreed on 12 August could cause annual inflation to spike to over a 1,000pc by early next year, a Central Bank economist tells Argus.