Venezuelan Deputy Oil Minister Luis Vierma said Thursday that Venezuela isn't yet worried about the drop in crude oil prices.
"They (oil prices) are still above the levels we had predicted," Vierma told Dow Jones Newswires in a phone interview.
After US crude? steep drop of $3.64 Wednesday, the two-session fall is the fourth biggest in the NYMEX?s history and the steepest since January 1991 during the first Gulf war, on rising US heating oil and gas inventories..
Venezuela's average oil price closed last week at $35.50 per barrel, above the $18.50 per barrel estimate used to calculate the 2004 national budget.
President Hugo Chavez recently said he did not think OPEC would have to cut output at the cartel's next meeting in Cairo.
