Latin America’s oil production struggles to recover

Venezuela and Mexico are still coping with the fallout from the downturn while Brazil is set to start adding barrels again

No region was hit quite as hard by the downturn as Latin America. Oil production across the region has fallen 20%, from 9.6m barrels a day as the crisis took hold in 2015, to around 8m b/d. A region-wide recovery to pre-crash output levels could still be years away—if it ever comes. Venezuela, of course, has led the decline. The oil-dependent country's economic and political crisis is closely entwined with the industry, fuelling its collapse—with the resulting fall in oil production in turn making the crisis even worse. Output, according to the International Energy Agency, has fallen 35% just since 2015, around 800,000 barrels a day to 1.6m b/d. The litany of problems facing Venezuela's oil