PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela — A general with no energy experience has been installed as the head of the state oil company. The deepening troubles at the state oil company, the country’s economic mainstay, threaten to further destabilize a nation and government facing a dire recession, soaring inflation and unbridled crime, as well as food and medicine shortages. When energy prices started to crater several years ago, Venezuela and other oil-dependent nations suffered in tandem. Now, prices are rising and others in the oil patch are on the mend. The state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, known as Pdvsa, teeters on the brink of collapse, its failures at once a symptom and a cause of the nation’s downward economic spiral.

Source: New York Times December 28, 2017 01:08 UTC