OREANDA-NEWS. Caracas has revived a campaign to hold an emergency meeting of Opec and Russia to agree on joint measures to strengthen world oil prices.

President Nicolas Maduro said in his weekly television broadcast last night that he is personally pushing for the meeting.

Venezuela?s government seems unlikely to succeed. Cutting production, even by as much as 2mn b/d, would do little to boost prices, Opec secretary-general Abdullah al-Badri said on 30 July at a meeting with Russian energy minister Alexander Novak.

Iranian oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh has previously called for cuts to the group's 30mn b/d production level as a way of supporting prices. But Tehran aims to ramp up its own production as soon as the agreement reached over its nuclear program can result in the lifting of sanctions.

Venezuela?s oil-based economy is expected to contract by more than 7pc in 2015, with triple digit inflation and acute shortages of food, medicine and fuel.

Maduro said Venezuela's economic slump, now in its third consecutive year, will likely worsen during the rest of 2015 as oil prices weaken again after a brief uptick earlier this year.

"Oil prices recovered to almost $56/bl just a few months ago, but this week the oil price dropped to $41/bl on Monday before recovering $1/bl on Tuesday," Maduro said, referring to Venezuela?s average export price.

The 2015 central government budget of $117bn is based on an average export price of $60/bl.

Venezuelan state-owned oil company PdV, which generates 97pc of the country's annual hard currency revenue, reported an average export price of $43.15/bl for the week ending 7 August.

Last week's average price was the lowest this year since the week of 26-30 January 2015 when PdV's average price was $38.82/bl.

"If PdV's export price holds around $49/bl for the remainder of 2015, it still would be the lowest oil price in any year since 2004 when the average export price was $37/bl," the energy ministry said.

Energy ministry economists estimate that PdV's oil export revenue could total as little as $41.5bn in 2015 if full-year average export prices are around $43/bl. PdV's projected full-year export revenues would be slightly higher, about $45bn, if the average price is about $50/bl.

PdV's projected oil export revenue in 2015 could be about 60pc lower than the average annual export revenue reported by the company from 2011-14 if the energy ministry's estimates prove accurate.

The plunge in PdV's average oil export prices has saddled the Maduro government with a fiscal deficit of up to $25bn in 2015, resuscitating the perceived risk of a sovereign default on over $125bn of foreign debt in first half 2016.

Opec kept output steady in July at close to a 38-month high, as Iraq and Saudi Arabia set new production records. The group produced 31.83mn b/d last month, down by just 40,000 b/d from June. Output rises in Angola, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia offset the effect of disruptions on supply in Qatar, Libya and Nigeria.