Venezuela considers it unnecessary to increase crude production to curb price hikes resulting from structural market problems, Venezuela's Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said Wednesday.

Problems should "not be sorted out through production increases or cuts," he said, referring to the intention of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the world's most important petroleum cartel, to increase supply.

"There are structural market problems, serious problems in refining, serious problems of speculation, and we, the OPEC countries, despite a big effort, have a limited capacity," he said during an oil meeting with Caribbean leaders in Puerto La Cruz, a city some 220 km east of Caracas.

"We cannot keep on laying the blame on producing countries alone. Consumer countries have to make an effort on refining, on infrastructure so as to have a balanced market," he added.

Ramirez said Venezuela, which has a production quota of 3.1 million barrels a day, has not been consulted by OPEC on a possible increase of 500,000 barrels of crude per day, which would be under discussion among OPEC members.

He also told the oil meeting that his country is redefining its energy policy in favor of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

"We want to see energy as a development factor and not as a speculation factor that widens the gap between countries," he said.

Venezuela is planning to open a Caribbean branch of its state- run oil company PDVSA to promote the development of infrastructure and the direct exchange of energy, petroleum and by-products in the region, said Ramirez.

OPEC decided to increase its output by 500,000 barrels a day at its meeting in Vienna, Austria, on June 15 and agreed to add an additional 500,000 barrels a day of production if oil prices continued to rise.

Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil exporter and an OPEC member, is currently producing about 3.3 million barrels of oil per day.

Source: Xinhua