12:44 - 19.02.2019

---

February 19, Fineko/abc.az. OPEC will continue operating normally, despite the fact that the U.S. has blacklisted Minister of Oil Industry of Venezuela, head of state oil & gas company PDVSA Manuel Quevedo, elected at the end of December the president of the cartel conference for 2019.

This was reported by The Wall Street Journal, citing sources in OPEC.

As OPEC Conference President Quevedo is due to go to Baku next month, where the meeting of the OPEC+ Ministerial Committee on monitoring the execution of the OPEC + transaction will be held, and in April to a meeting in Vienna. As the head of Dubai-based consulting company Qamar Energy, Robin Mills, told the newspaper, sanctions against Quevedo "should not be a problem" for OPEC, "he is not going to discuss business".

WSJ sources added that OPEC has not yet determined with the matter of resolving the crisis in Venezuela. The newspaper says that at the moment the cartel recognizes Nicolas Maduro as the president of the republic, but can also declare the recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaido as the head of state, if the UN does so.

As the newspaper notes, this is not the first such case in the history of OPEC. In August 2011, the General of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Rostam Hasemi, became the new Iranian Oil Minister, who has chaired the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries since the beginning of the year. A year earlier, Hasemi was included in the sanction lists of the European Union. Although restrictive measures included a ban on business travel to EU countries, Hasemi was allowed to travel to Vienna because he was considered an employee of an international non-profit organization.