OPEC may hold an emergency meeting before June, Algeria says

Many petroleum exporting countries are already feeling the pain of the recent drop in oil prices, leading some market observers to speculate that even Gulf producers.

On Monday, the chief executive officer of Kuwait’s state-run oil company, Nizar al-Adsani, told a conference in Kuwait City that “Oil prices will stay around the current level of $65 for six or seven months until OPEC changes its production policy, or recovery in world economic growth becomes more clear, or a geopolitical tension arises,” Bloomberg reported.

Those remarks followed what commentators described as a “breath-taking” sell-off in oil futures over the last couple of weeks.

They also led some economists to wonder if the cartel of oil producing nations might not be now somewhat more worried that events might soon get out of hand.

Indeed, on Tuesday Algeria’s oil minister was quoted as saying the cartel of oil producing countries might hold an emergency meeting before its next regularly scheduled summit, in June.

On the previous day, the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, railed at his country’s current predicament – 95% of whose export revenues are accounted for by oil.

The risk-premium on the South American country's sovereign debt is a staggering 2,072 basis points over US Treasuries of a similar maturity; in effect cutting it off from international debt markets to make up for a lack in oil revenues.

Amongst the few politically unsavoury options open to Caracas, should the low prices in crude persist, is to cut energy subsidies to its own population.

All of the above comes as a few international experts have recently predicted that Venezuela is irrevocably headed towards a sovereign debt default.